Visa uses CBDC for programmable finance prototype for farmers

finextra.com:

Visa was one of nine firms picked by Banco Central do Brasil last year to participate in the 'Lift Challenge Real Digital', investigating various aspects of a CBDC. The payments giant teamed up with Microsoft, Agrotoken and Sinqia to develop its submission; a programmable finance platform for SMEs, particularly farmers, that is designed to enable greater access to global capital markets, facilitate interoperability between currencies, improve operational processes, and uncover new growth opportunities.

Visa says that the prototype is designed to provide local farmers with more timely and greater access to a global pool of investors for financing, allowing them to get the best price discovery for their goods. Catherine Gu, global head, CBDC, Visa, says: "By contributing our expertise, scale, network, and cutting-edge technologies in this market, we are able to help advance real-world applications of digital currencies — in this case making it possible for a soybean farmer to create and globally auction a tokenized contract on a permissioned version of the Ethereum blockchain, while utilizing different forms of money and interoperating between them.” The programmable aspects of digital currencies, which allow delivery and payment of assets and currencies to be automatically settled only when certain conditions are met, open the door for more efficient capital usage and reduced counterparty risks, while leveraging the security, stability, and safety of a central bank liability via CBDC as a reliable settlement currency, says Visa.

The prototype platform brings existing financial processes and assets on-chain, allowing farmers to tokenize traditional financing contracts. To achieve this, Agrotoken brought its