In collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laboratory for Economic Analysis and Design (MIT LEAD)↗︎ and Maiden Labs↗︎, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH↗︎ led multi-year applied research to examine whether and how CBDCs could advance goals like the SDGs in the global south.
Our findings provide new evidence from field research in Brazil, global survey and interview data, and in-person workshops with 24 central banks across five global regions that CBDCs can offer more than just government-backed digital cash.
— Dispatches from the Front:
LMIC Leaders & Prototypes
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The future of the global economy is digital, and CBDCs will be an unstoppable force on the financial rails we are building today.
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Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are leading this technological shift, and in the process, paving new paths toward scalable public goods, like the SDGs.
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Development organizations and funders have a rare opportunity to advance LMIC leadership in this space with impacts that can span globally.
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Without coordination and action, we risk losing this historically rare opportunity for LMICs to actively participate in setting standards that will bind decades or centuries of global economic activity.
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Our research identifies three interrelated programs that can achieve these goals and help realize the transformative potential for CBDCs in programmable, intelligent financial infrastructures across LMICs.
“Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) — and especially their underlying technological infrastructure — are a new and effective component of digital public infrastructure (DPI) that can advance the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are actively advancing this frontier, and require urgent support to realize its full potential.”
— Matthias Poser, Economist, Financial Systems Development, GIZ GmbH
— Central Bank Research Participants
Azerbaijan
Bhutan
Brazil
Colombia
Georgia
Ghana
Hong Kong
Hungary
India
Indonesia
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Korea
Kyrgyzstan
Malaysia
Mexico
Nigeria
Philippines
South Africa
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Ukraine
Uruguay
— Frontier Innovation
Well-designed CBDCs can increasingly advance the entire frontier of DPI, offering programmable digital financial infrastructure that inherently improves economic trust, automation, and policy at scale.
Today, the question for emerging economies is no longer if a CBDC should be launched, but how to design and lead a national and integrated digital finance transition.
LMICs are motivated by urgent, tangible goals: slashing the high cost of remittances, boosting the efficiency of domestic commerce, formalizing the economy, providing reliable payment access in areas with poor connectivity, and developing systemic tools to combat climate change.
Technology Breaking the Silos & Frontier Prototypes
Smart, programmable digital financial infrastructure can replace fragmented, slow, manual, and inefficient systems with transparent, automated, and accountable processes. Central bank involvement adds a layer of credibility and oversight that purely private systems sometimes lack. These models reduce risk, increase reach, and strengthen trust, making financial systems not only more efficient but fundamentally more inclusive and responsive.
CBDCs, when designed as programmable digital financial infrastructure, have the potential to fundamentally reshape how financial systems contribute to sustainable development.
By combining distributed ledgers, programmability, and advanced cryptography, CBDCs can provide tools to address complex global challenges that traditional financial infrastructure cannot manage effectively. This potential does not materialize automatically. It depends on thoughtful design, alongside strategic and continuous testing. Brazil is leading the way.
Brazil SME Lending
Prototypes developed as part of Brazil’s LIFT Challenge demonstrate lower monitoring costs and a significant reduction in manual intervention for lenders. These efficiencies make it feasible to offer competitive credit rates to rural SMEs, thereby supporting SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure).
Brazil Climate Action
Brazil’s DREX Pilot-Phase 2 includes a project demonstrating the technical feasibility of tokenizing decarbonization credits (CBIOs). By enhancing the efficiency and transparency across the lifecycle CBIOs (shortening processing times, eliminating manual reconciliations and settlement risk, and strengthening their auditability and traceability), this project makes broader participation by institutional and retail investors possible. This prototype’s success is also opening the door to tokenizing other sustainable assets.
“Our research shows a rare and valuable opportunity to uplift LMIC leadership on an emerging technology in ways that foster scalable global public goods...The future of digital financial innovation will be LMIC-led. It remains to be seen who will support it.”
— Dr. Tim Marple, Co-Director, Maiden Labs
— Geoeconomic Pressures & Opportunities for LMIC Leadership
The transition to a digital global economy is underway, and CBDCs are a likely unstoppable feature of this transition. In many respects, this represents a historically rare breakthrough opportunity for LMICs to actively participate in setting standards that will bind decades or centuries of global economic activity.
If the global community fails to recognize and support this emergent leadership, the standards eventually set for digital money will be dictated by the cautious incumbents, designed to solve AE problems while overlooking the needs of the global majority. This would not only stifle innovation but also bake inequity into the financial system of the 21st century.
To harness this historic opportunity, we must close the substantial gaps in development programs for CBDCs. By empowering LMICs with the tailored research, peer-learning forums, and expert support they need, we can foster a more inclusive, resilient, and innovative global financial system, built from the ground up by the very countries that stand to benefit most.
— Recomendation
The challenges LMICs face in digital financial development represent interconnected hurdles best addressed with holistic solutions that can apply to any phase of development.
Expert Network
There is a strong demand among LMICs for long-term engagements with experts who can tailor solutions to their local context and priorities.
Challenge
Technological expertise alone is necessary, but insufficient to address LMIC’s CBDC TA needs
Recommendation
Cultivate a distributed network of specialized, embedded, & multidisciplinary academic experts
Challenge
Today’s CBDC peer learning forums are hotbeds for global standard-setting—but LMICs are not yet leading them
Recommendation
Build dedicated, sustained LMIC-centric peer learning forums for CBDCs
LMIC Forums
A major risk of today’s limited LMIC leadership in peer learning forums is that they are left out of the standard-setting process for digital money at a global scale.
Technical Assistance On-Ramping
The prevailing approach to CBDC among LMICs in our research is one of exploration and experimentation. This early stage suggests that many LMICs are not yet "ready" for traditional technical assistance that focuses on large-scale deployment or advanced system scaling. Compounded by the challenges in securing appropriately tailored expert inputs and limited opportunities to learn from other LMICs’ projects, this creates a situation of ‘pilot project purgatory’.
Challenge
Projects are often too early-stage to benefit from standard technical assistance
Recommendation
Develop dedicated, LMIC-specific assistance on-ramping playbooks and resource hubs
— Discussions
On June 25th, 2025, GIZ GmbH, Maiden Labs, and the MIT Laboratory for Economic Analysis held a forum for new digital technologies that are transforming the financial landscape and how we should pursue development goals. This virtual discussion highlighted insights from collaborative research conducted with over 20 countries.
Panelists included:
Ananya Kumar
Senior Fellow, Future of Money
Atlantic Council
Washington D.C., US
Jan Marlon A. Evangelista
Technical Lead, Project Agila
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas
Philippines
Sonja Davidovic
Senior Digital Expert on Transformative Technologies
International Monetary Fund
Washington D.C., US
Varlam Ebanoidze
Head, FinTech and SupTech Development
National Bank of Georgia
Georgia
Team
Prof. Rob Townsend
Principal Investigator, MIT LEAD Professor of Economics
MIT LEAD
Massachusetts, US
Nicolas Xuan-Yi Zhang
Affiliate Researcher, MIT LEAD, Financial Sector Expert, IMF
MIT LEAD
Washington D.C., US
Shira Frank
Co-Director
Maiden Labs
Colorado, US
Dr. Tim Marple
Co-Director
Maiden Labs
California, US
Gabriella Torres
LMIC Engagement Manager
Maiden Labs
California, US
Matthias Poser
Economist, Financial Systems Development
GIZ GmbH
Frankfurt, DE
Klaus Prochaska
Senior Financial Sector Specialist, Asia Development Bank; Former Head of Competence Center FSD
GIZ GmbH
Manila, PH
