Could Central Bank Digital Currencies Create a New Paradigm for International Trade?

Central banks are racing to digitize their currencies, and a new infrastructure for cross-border payments is emerging. It promises faster settlements, greater autonomy for emerging markets, and a potential challenge to the dollar’s long-standing dominance.

The global economic system is undergoing emerging developments, using encrypted technology in order to transform our conception of money, as well as deeply remodeling international trade. These changes come from the use of digital currencies, especially CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currency). According to Demertzis and Lipsky (2023),

“the motivation for embarking on CBDCs in many advanced economies comes primarily from a desire to compete with the increased degree of digitalisation in finance that threatens to displace physical cash and challenge the monopoly of sovereign money”.

The use of CBDCs allows for cross-border and multi-currency transactions that are not subject to much of the bureaucracy of the global banking system, making it faster than using traditional methods. Significant time savings are achieved, minimizing transaction waiting periods across the world. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) affirms that a five-day transaction of international commerce could be finished in ten seconds only with the use of CBDC, leading the global commerce network to experience savings that come “from removing the network of correspondent banks in the chain of transactions and porting direct corridors in place instead that allow banks to communicate” (Demertzis and Lipsky, 2023). Issues regarding interoperability across different national CBDC architectures may be a challenge central banks will face soon, but these concerns may be terminated with multilateral agreements in diplomacy levels.

CBDCs can even allow certain countries to have greater independence in international commerce. This is especially beneficial for emergent economies like Brazil’s and India’s. Since these international digital currencies may substitute the use of the Dollar in transactions, they can preserve the monetary sovereignty of emergent countries’ international trade. In this sense, CBDCs are able to promote globalization when they can provide solutions for specificities in countries’ economic demands for a fast and reliable network of payment systems. According to Camacho and Silva (2025), “the benefits of issuing a CBDC should definitely outweigh costs and risks. When tailored and perfectly aligned to the country’s national context, it could offer a range of public benefits”. Internationally, the widespread use of CBDCs will certainly compete against the massive use of Dollar.

Since Bretton Woods, the US dollar has served as the anchor for global transactions of international trade, investment, products, services and settlement. However, as Demertzis and Lipsky (2023) argue, two countries that have CBDCs can theoretically bypass the current dollar-based system using their own digital currency issued by their own central bank. All it takes to promote transactions this way is a bilateral or multilateral agreement to ensure the utility of the digital currency among the countries involved.

We may notice that CBDCs are not entirely equal to cryptocurrencies created in the private sector. Instead, the states are able to manage the national monetary system and issue currency similarly to cash, but in a digital form. As Lal and Jatav note (2024), “Digital currencies that are produced and controlled by centralised institutions differ significantly from their decentralised counterparts although they utilise the same kind of underlying blockchain technology”. Having the digital currency issued by a central bank, as opposed to private companies, makes it more easily accepted by the general public, who may not be familiar with complex economics. An important feature of a currency is that it must be trustworthy to be successful, otherwise people may not consider it a viable option for payments.

Up to this date, the Atlantic Council CBDC tracker (2026) reports 146 countries that have already initiated some sort of project regarding CBDCs, representing 98% of total GDP worldwide (EuroFinance). Most of these projects are not yet launched, which is why CBDCs still only represent a small piece of the total amount of currencies used in international trade. In 2024, 307.1 million dollars in CBDCs were used for transactions, but there is an expectation for this number to rise up to 7.8 billion by 2031 (EuroFinance). Out of the 146 countries, only three have already launched their CBDCs,  Nigeria, Jamaica and Bahamas (this last being an early adopter). Even though only three countries are already issuing currencies in CBDC form, 41 other countries are in a pilot phase before the full launch of their digital currencies. Nevertheless, there are still 33 countries in the development phase and 40 in research. In the next graph, you can see which countries are in a development phase of launching a CBDC (Atlantic Council, 2026):

Having all this context in mind, it becomes evident that the future of international trade will include vastly different kinds of digital currencies, especially CBDCs. Countries will be able to issue their currencies using the central banks with lower interference from bureaucracy. The lack of CBDCs nowadays must not be interpreted as a lack of trust in digital currencies for international commerce; instead, there is a race to develop CBDCs amongst countries, ensuring that they are not left behind in technological monetary initiatives.

References

Atlantic Council (2026). Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker. Atlantic Council. May 2026. Available at: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/cbdctracker/ (Accessed: 08 August 2026).

Camacho, Tatiana Silveira; da Silva, Guilherme Jonas Costa (2025). Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and Instant Payments: alternatives to global digital asset markets for Brazil and India. Revista de Economia Política, 2025, v. 45(3), pages 1-19.

Demertzis, Maria; Lipsky, Josh (2023). The Geopolitics of Central Bank Digital Currencies. Intereconomics, 2023, v. 58(4), pages 173-177.

EuroFinance. Future of finance: CBDCs and a new era for money and global transactions. EuroFinance. Available at:

https://www.eurofinance.com/news/future-of-finance-cbdcs-and-a-new-era-for-money-and-global-transactions/ (Accessed: 08 August 2026).

Lal, Madan, Jatav, Anuj (2024). Digital Currencies Impact on Development of International Trade and Economy Growth. In: Aneja, R., Dygas, R. (eds) Digital Currencies in The New Global World Order. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.