Turkey's Central Bank says digital lira tests will continue in 2023

Turkey's central bank said Thursday that it successfully carried out the first payment transactions on the Digital Turkish Lira Network as part of first-phase studies.

The central bank will continue to run "limited, closed-circuit pilot tests" in the first quarter of 2023. It plans to expand the Digital Turkish Lira Collaboration Platform to select banks and financial technology companies as it unveils advanced phases of the pilot study.

The bank "will continue to run tests for authentic architectural setups designed in areas such as the use of distributed ledger technologies in payment systems and the integration of these technologies with instant payment systems," it said in a statement.

Studies on the economic and legal framework of the Digital Turkish Lira, as well as its technological requirements, will be prioritized throughout 2023, the bank added.

Other countries working toward central bank digital currencies include Kazakhstan, Japan and India.

The U.S. Federal Reserve published a report that detailed the pros and cons of CBDCs earlier this year, while the European Central Bank is looking at options for integrating decentralized ledger technology into existing payment settlement systems.