Daniel Schwarz

Central Bank Digital Currencies and competition laws: recognising the importance of competition laws in the CBDC ecosystem

When designing and issuing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), central banks will need to assess whether they are subject to and compliant with competition laws. This will be most relevant to the extent that they are competing with other payment systems and if they appear to be acting beyond what is necessary to achieve their duties. Even where they are not subject to or infringing competition law, they will need to consider the impact of CBDCs on competition, whether as part of a statutory competition objective or to achieve other statutory objectives. If legislation were introduced to facilitate the creation of CBDCs, this could set out the applicability of competition law and a general competition objective in relation to the activities of the central bank.