Central Bank Digital Currencies and Online Payments

130-plus central banks working on digital currencies. 98% of global GDP represented. Those are Atlantic Council numbers from mid-2025, and they sound like a tidal wave until you look at how many have gone live. Three. Three retail CBDCs launched nationally. Everything else is pilots, research papers, and committees. The infrastructure underneath all those pilots will eventually hit online payments hard, though, from everyday retail to platforms like 1xbet and other betting operators that live and die by how fast money moves in and out of user accounts.

Where CBDC Pilots Stand Right Now

One pilot dwarfs the rest. 3.4 billion transactions, roughly $2.3 trillion processed by December 2025. Then in January 2026 the central bank running it reclassified its digital currency as deposit liabilities, and nobody quite knows what to make of that yet. Could mean a fundamental rethink of how CBDCs sit within the banking system. Could mean accounting housekeeping. The pilot is still running either way, and the transaction volumes keep growing quarter after quarter.

Over at the ECB, the two-year preparation phase for the Digital Euro wrapped up in October 2025. Draft rulebook published, technical framework done, legislation expected 2026, live pilots maybe 2027. A separate central bank launched its Digital Pound Lab in August 2025 and ran tests showing offline CBDC payments can work.

Cross-border wholesale is where the momentum is sharpest. Those projects have more than doubled since 2022. mBridge hit $55.49 billion in transaction volume, a 2,500-fold jump from early tests. All 11 BRICS members are exploring digital currencies, and the 2026 summit reportedly floated linking them for cross-border trade.

What This Means for Betting Payments

You deposit money on a betting platform through your bank. Standard card processing. The operator waits three to five business days for settlement on the back end, and weekends and holidays slow it further. You win on a Saturday night, you might not see that money until Wednesday. Operators have known for years that slow withdrawals push users to other platforms or, worse, back to the casino tab while they wait. Coinflow, a payment infrastructure company, published research in 2026 calling slow settlement a direct cause of player churn in regulated markets.

CBDCs change the plumbing. Settlement happens instantly, around the clock, no batching, no intermediary banks skimming fees or adding delays. iGamingToday ran a study in 2025 that found betting operators who matched payment methods to local preferences (digital wallets, instant bank transfers, regional processors) had noticeably better authorisation rates and kept users longer. CBDCs would take that logic and bake it into the monetary system itself.

Stablecoins got there first, sort of. USDC gives you 24/7 cross-border liquidity without correspondent banking or brutal FX spreads. Crypto processors charge 0.25% to 0.50%, which undercuts traditional card fees. Account-to-account transfers that skip card networks altogether are growing fast too. But stablecoins have a de-pegging problem that keeps making headlines, and banks still treat them with suspicion. CBDCs carry central bank backing, legal tender status, and the kind of regulatory clarity that licensed betting operators need before they integrate anything new into their payment stack.

Privacy Concerns and the Surveillance Question

Here’s the uncomfortable part. The HRF (Human Rights Foundation) has been pointing out that identity-linked CBDC wallets create what they call “unprecedented financial visibility.” Every transaction logged, every payment traced back to a verified identity. Central banks keep calling CBDCs “digital cash,” but cash lets you buy something without anyone recording it. A permissioned ledger with identity verification does the opposite.

94% of central banks the BIS surveyed in 2024 said they were exploring CBDCs. Impressive on paper. The three that went live have all reported weak adoption from their populations. People like the idea of digital payments, but they already have digital payments that work fine. Asking them to switch to a government-run version with identity tracking baked in is a harder sell than the pilot data suggests, and the privacy objections aren’t going away.

The 2026 to 2027 Window Looks Busy

Digital Euro legislation expected 2026. Multiple cross-border CBDC pilots moving to real transactions. mBridge expanding. Programmable CBDCs already tested for welfare disbursements in several regions. Cross-border retail pilots on the calendar for 2026-27. The betting sector processes billions annually and haemorrhages money to slow settlement, so if you’re looking for an industry with a reason to integrate CBDCs early, that’s a strong candidate.