JCB pilots central bank digital currency payment solution

The pilot aims to enable transfer of CBDC offline, and without the need to change POS terminals.

Japan-based payment brand JCB has teamed up with IDEMIA and Soft Space to develop a central bank digital currency (CBDC) payment solution.

With this, merchants can accept CBDC without the need to modify their point of sale (POS) terminals and payment cards. 

The solution was successfully piloted in Tokyo in 2023. JCB, IDEMIA, and Soft Space have since proceeded with the next phase of the project, which will commence in early 2024.

In Phase 2, customers will be able to transfer CBDC funds from one person to another using their cards and mobile phones even without connectivity. Users should be able to do P2P (peer-to-peer) fund transfers from one card to another with a mobile NFC device as an intermediary, or from one mobile NFC device to another mobile NFC device directly.

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As an example, JCB and its partners are exploring if consumers can send CBDC funds offline by tapping their card to another person’s mobile NFC device.

For this project, IDEMIA and Soft Space provided the tokenization back-end server, mobile wallet application, card application and SoftPOS solution, as well as all necessary APIs and SDKs for system and application integration purposes. 

The project uses IDEMIA's protocol, the industry standard for Offline CBDC Payments, and leverages on Soft Space’s expertise in contactless payments.