“A pilot is not a promise — we are testing whether this works at all”
The market has read the pilot as a commitment to issue. Is that fair?
No, and we have been careful in how we describe it. A pilot establishes whether something is technically and operationally sound. Issuance is a separate decision, taken on separate grounds, and it has not been taken.
What would cause the programme to stop?
Several things would. If settlement finality proved weaker than the existing system, that would end it. If the operational burden on participating banks turned out to exceed the benefit, that would end it. We have defined those criteria in advance precisely so the decision is not made on momentum.
Why wholesale before retail?
Because the wholesale case is narrower and the participants are supervised institutions we already have a relationship with. Retail introduces questions about disintermediation of deposits that we are not ready to answer, and answering them badly would be costly.
How much of this is about remittances?
It is the clearest near-term case, but it is not the only one. The remittance corridor has genuine friction, and the value lost in that friction falls on households with little margin. That makes it a good place to look, but the pilot is broader than one use.