Norwegian Block Exchange has on September 28th been selected by the Norwegian Central Bank (Norges Bank) for the next phase of its CBDC development. NBX was chosen after a competitive tender process, confirming NBX's position as a global leader in the blockchain/DLT space. The tender consisted of three separate development areas and is a continuation of the sandbox project performed by Nahmii earlier this year.

Norges Bank plan to involve NBX in a number of projects like cross-border payment of retail CBDC, research and test of ways to solve KYC/AML/CTF issues for retail CBDC, and test of enabling NOK CBDC to be used in eco-systems outside primary domestic sandbox network. Norges Bank emphasizes that it has not decided to issue CBDC in production, this is only an experimental test of retail CBDC. The technical sandbox where Norges Bank can issue, redeem, burn and distribute to private banks retail CBDC was up and running in May 2022.

Now the focus is on different user cases in the sandbox. This experimental test phase is planned to end by the summer of 2023, with a public report.