By Kingsley I. Ilechukwu, Bureau Chief, South West

An award-winning software company and first-of-its-kind Modern Central Banking Infrastructure provider, EMTECH has announced the public release of its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Innovation Kit for fintechs and financial service providers looking to test new fintech solutions and business models with Central Bank Digital Currency.

With over 10 trillion of paper cash in circulation and over 93 per cent of central banks exploring and piloting CBDCs introducing a digital version of cash, the CBDC Innovation Kit provides fintechs a set of tools with which to begin their discovery of the possibilities of a digital cash infrastructure.

Leveraging a public distributed ledger technology (HederaHashgraph) as a layer 1 protocol and ERC-20 standard for tokenization, EMTECH’s simulated token called “Beyond Cash” is used for the purpose of innovation projects with fintech ecosystems. The CBDC Innovation Kit makes BYDC accessible via developer-friendly APIs for a “Bring Your Own App” ecosystem model and comes with pre-built dashboards for users as they run their tests. The APIs allow a fintech company to embed BYDC wallets via their app, test various types of transactions and pull wallet and transaction data from the ledger. This is the company’s first CBDC offering to help Fintechs understand what’s in it for them with CBDC.

“We’re extremely proud to officially announce this flagship CBDC offering for fintechs. Our point of view has been consistent: enabling central banks to safely deploy their CBDC as a digital cash infrastructure, not just a software application can drive inclusion, interoperability and resilience by embracing the growing fintech ecosystems. From payments, savings to lending and investments, from rideshares to remittances. Imagine if the US$10 trillion or more of paper cash floating in the world was issued digitally, used and accounted securely, in real time and seamlessly. Imagine what fintech apps could do for cash users.” said EMTECH Founder and CEO, Carmelle Cadet. “By creating a simulator with the generic name “Beyond Cash” and pre-built APIs ready to use, we bring modern central banking closer to fintechs and we help our central bank clients validate what’s possible as part of their exploration.”

“This is a first for EMTECH, and with a beta launch earlier this year, we saw the interest from fintechs who signed up for our Innovation Kit. Even without a live CBDC deployed, there’s a lot of capacity to build on fintech side as well. We are eager to help explore new possibilities with CBDCs coming down the pipe. Those who get ahead of the curve have much to gain,” said Executive Director, Africa at EMTECH Tunji Odumuboni.

CBDC is objectively a hot topic in finance today. There are many questions and theories on what CBDCs are and are not. In our design, we take seriously the concerns on privacy and controls. By launching this innovation kit, we believe we can help showcase how we’re designing for trust and adoption. Once established, the industry can solve challenges for the billions of people out of the banking system such as, lack of access to capital and high cost of cross border payments, stated Director Of Product at Product Gbemi Munis.

Despite their broad inclusion in Central Bank strategies, the impact of CBDC on economic and financial systems remains relatively unknown. Introducing them could present significant risks, such as issues with monetary policy transmission, efficient functionality of payment systems, and overall financial stability. To reduce these variables, Central Banks must understand the implications of various CBDC configurations. CBDC’s Innovation Kit creates the opportunity for fintechs and other financial service providers to test those configurations in their own app much faster and with little to no risk.