Minutes of the 9th CBDC Liaison Council Meeting

These minutes summarize the ninth meeting of the CBDC Liaison Council, held on June 4, 2025. The Bank of Japan explained the progress of the pilot experiment and overseas developments concerning CBDC, while the Ministry of Finance explained the Second Interim Report of the Liaison Council of Relevant Ministries and Agencies and the Bank of Japan.

The meeting discussed the future vision for the overall payment system, including the experimental system, basic functions and additional services, intermediaries, existing private payment systems, and international payments.

It was stated that standardizing the interface specifications for update APIs would contribute to improving the convenience and interoperability of private payment services. Stablecoin-based small-value international remittances were said to increase the potential for reducing risks through frequent small-value transactions.

The secretariat explained that it would organize the discussions of each working group by theme and across groups, and return the results to society. It also plans to provide participants with feedback on the results of developing and verifying the experimental system.

The view was expressed that CBDC's basic functions should be limited to the necessary minimum, while additional services should be left to the ingenuity of private-sector operators, although a clear boundary between the two has not been determined. Specifications that all financial institutions could adopt and universal access through a broad range of intermediaries were also discussed.

Based on the Second Interim Report, the system's structure, operation, maintenance, and resilience; development and operating costs; AML/CFT; privacy and data use; and the division of roles with other payment methods were presented as matters to consider, on the premise of benefits such as improved convenience that would exceed social costs. It was explained that overseas experiments include an experiment in India covering in-store use, person-to-person transfers, programmability, and offline payments, and that, regarding China, a pilot experiment is also being conducted in Hong Kong.