Central Banks of Italy and South Korea to Cooperate on CBDC

According to reports, the central banks of Italy and South Korea have announced a memorandum of understanding to share technical knowledge in support of real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
In terms of CBDCs, the paths of the two central banks are quite different. While the Bank of Korea has conducted retail CBDC trials, the current focus is on issuing wholesale CBDCs to support tokenized bank deposits. The initial tokenized deposit trial will be used for programmable payments, including voucher-based testing.