Central Banks on a Mission

An educated guess might lead you to believe central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are an invention of recent times, however, history reveals that the very first "CBDC" project was initiated as early as 1993 in Finland with Project Avant that set out to build a single national electronic purse system. The project failed and was sold to commercial banks, but it did sow the seeds for central bank-led payments innovation for the masses.