Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) have been fully launched only in the Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria. CBDCs are in development, research and testing in 131 countries. Pilot tests are in various stages in another 36 countries. CBDCs are identical twins of banknotes. As such, they need to be available to consumers 100% of the time. This means they must be able to function offline when an online connection to a financial ledger approved by a central bank can’t be attained. Idemia Secure Transactions (IST), a division of Idemia Group, best known in card payments as the second largest ...