Central Bank Digital Currency Pilot Delivery and Operational Governance Intensive Course

Course Introduction

Central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiatives represent a significant development in the modernization of monetary and payment systems, requiring central banks to combine monetary expertise, technology innovation, operational resilience, regulatory clarity, and institutional governance. The Central Bank Digital Currency Pilot Delivery and Operational Governance Intensive Course provides a structured approach to planning, designing, testing, and governing CBDC pilots before decisions are made about broader implementation. Participants will examine how to translate policy objectives into pilot requirements, define measurable success criteria, establish delivery structures, and coordinate the technical, operational, legal, and financial disciplines needed for controlled experimentation.

CBDC pilots operate at the intersection of central bank responsibilities, commercial banking infrastructure, payment service providers, digital identity systems, cybersecurity, financial regulation, and public trust. A pilot may involve retail payments between individuals and merchants, wholesale settlement between financial institutions, cross-border transfers, or selected combinations of these use cases. Each model presents distinct requirements for transaction processing, participant eligibility, wallet design, settlement finality, privacy, interoperability, and operational control. This course examines these differences and equips participants with methods for selecting appropriate pilot boundaries, identifying dependencies, assessing institutional readiness, and ensuring that proposed experiments remain aligned with the central bank's mandate and financial system conditions.

Successful CBDC pilot delivery requires a clear operating model, realistic implementation roadmap, defined stakeholder responsibilities, and rigorous controls over technology and financial transactions. Participants will explore the selection of technical architectures, ledger and transaction models, distribution arrangements, wallet services, identity and access management, integration interfaces, and settlement mechanisms. The course also addresses the practical requirements of developing a pilot environment, including system configuration, data preparation, participant onboarding, testing environments, transaction limits, reconciliation procedures, incident handling, and operational support. Particular attention is given to ensuring that a pilot can be conducted safely, with transparent entry and exit criteria and clear separation between experimental activity and any future production deployment.

Operational governance is essential because CBDC pilots may expose policy, technology, legal, financial, reputational, and systemic risks that cannot be managed by technical teams alone. Participants will examine governance committees, decision rights, risk ownership, change control, escalation procedures, audit trails, vendor oversight, incident response, and regulatory coordination. They will consider how privacy-by-design, cybersecurity, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing controls, consumer protection, accessibility, and data governance should be incorporated into the pilot lifecycle. The course also explores the importance of defining legal authority, clarifying the status of pilot transactions, managing participant consent, and establishing transparent procedures for complaints, reversals, refunds, dispute resolution, and the closure of pilot accounts.

CBDC experimentation is evolving alongside tokenization, programmable payments, digital identity, real-time payment infrastructure, artificial intelligence, distributed ledger technologies, and cross-border payment innovation. These developments create opportunities for testing efficiency, settlement speed, financial inclusion, resilience, and interoperability, but they also introduce uncertainties concerning scalability, privacy, governance, monetary transmission, bank funding, financial stability, and technology dependence. The course evaluates how central banks can design controlled experiments that generate useful evidence without assuming that a successful technical demonstration automatically justifies nationwide issuance. Participants will learn to distinguish technical feasibility, operational readiness, user acceptance, economic implications, and institutional preparedness when interpreting pilot results and considering next steps.

By completing the Central Bank Digital Currency Pilot Delivery and Operational Governance Intensive Course, participants will be better prepared to plan and oversee CBDC pilot initiatives through structured stages of discovery, design, implementation, testing, controlled operation, evaluation, and closure. They will develop practical capabilities in pilot charter development, stakeholder coordination, solution assessment, operational procedures, risk management, testing strategy, performance measurement, incident governance, and evidence-based decision-making. The program emphasizes proportionate experimentation, accountable governance, measurable outcomes, and responsible innovation, enabling central banks and participating institutions to evaluate CBDC options with greater clarity while preserving financial integrity, operational resilience, public confidence, and institutional control.

Duration

10 days

Who Should Attend

• Central bank executives, directors, and senior managers responsible for digital currency strategy, payment system modernization, monetary infrastructure, and innovation programmes.

• CBDC programme directors and project managers overseeing pilot initiation, implementation planning, stakeholder coordination, delivery governance, and readiness reviews.

• Monetary policy and financial stability specialists assessing the potential implications of CBDC design choices for monetary transmission, bank funding, liquidity, and payment behavior.

• Payment systems professionals responsible for settlement arrangements, transaction processing, interoperability, payment service integration, and operational performance.

• Information technology and enterprise architecture leaders evaluating CBDC platforms, ledger technologies, integration patterns, hosting models, and technical dependencies.

• Cybersecurity, information security, and operational resilience professionals responsible for threat modeling, access controls, security testing, incident response, and continuity arrangements.

• Legal, compliance, and regulatory professionals addressing legal authority, privacy, consumer protection, AML/CFT obligations, data handling, and regulatory coordination.

• Risk management, internal audit, and assurance specialists responsible for governance reviews, control design, risk registers, independent testing, and auditability.

• Commercial bank executives, technology leads, and payment operations teams participating in CBDC distribution, wallet services, settlement, reconciliation, and pilot integration.

• Fintech companies, payment service providers, and technology vendors supporting wallet applications, API integration, transaction infrastructure, digital identity, and testing environments.

• Data governance, privacy, and digital identity specialists responsible for consent management, identity verification, access policies, information lifecycle controls, and privacy-preserving design.

• Financial inclusion and consumer protection professionals assessing usability, accessibility, digital literacy, complaints management, and the needs of underserved communities.

• Programme management office professionals supporting delivery assurance, budget control, dependencies, milestone tracking, documentation, and executive reporting.

• Economists, researchers, and policy analysts developing pilot hypotheses, evaluation frameworks, adoption indicators, economic scenarios, and evidence-based recommendations.

• Consultants and advisers supporting CBDC feasibility studies, architecture selection, pilot implementation, operational readiness, governance design, and post-pilot evaluation.

Course Objectives

• Develop a comprehensive understanding of CBDC concepts, design models, institutional responsibilities, and the relationship between policy objectives and practical pilot delivery.

• Establish a structured CBDC pilot lifecycle covering strategic justification, use-case selection, design, implementation, testing, controlled operation, evaluation, and closure.

• Define pilot objectives, scope boundaries, eligibility criteria, assumptions, success measures, transaction limits, and decision gates that support controlled experimentation.

• Assess alternative CBDC architectures, ledger models, distribution arrangements, wallet designs, integration approaches, and settlement mechanisms against defined requirements.

• Design effective governance arrangements that establish decision rights, accountability, risk ownership, change control, escalation procedures, and independent assurance.

• Develop operational models for participant onboarding, identity verification, transaction processing, reconciliation, customer support, dispute handling, and pilot exit.

• Integrate cybersecurity, privacy, AML/CFT, consumer protection, legal compliance, data governance, and operational resilience into pilot design and implementation.

• Establish testing strategies covering functional performance, security, interoperability, scalability, usability, settlement integrity, recovery, and operational readiness.

• Strengthen coordination among central bank departments, financial institutions, technology vendors, regulators, payment providers, and other pilot participants.

• Develop risk-based monitoring and incident management arrangements for detecting, reporting, escalating, investigating, and resolving pilot disruptions or control failures.

• Apply practical evaluation methods to assess technical performance, participant experience, operational costs, adoption behavior, policy relevance, and financial system implications.

• Prepare evidence-based recommendations for continuing, modifying, expanding, pausing, or closing a CBDC pilot without treating pilot success as an automatic commitment to national issuance.

Comprehensive Course Outline

Module 1: CBDC Fundamentals, Strategic Rationale, and Pilot Objectives

• Examine the characteristics of retail and wholesale CBDCs and distinguish central bank digital money from commercial bank deposits, electronic money, cryptocurrencies, and privately issued stablecoins.

• Analyze possible CBDC objectives, including payment efficiency, resilience, financial inclusion, settlement innovation, public access to central bank money, and cross-border payment improvements.

• Assess the relationship between a proposed CBDC and existing payment systems, monetary arrangements, financial sector structures, national digital strategies, and central bank mandates.

• Develop a preliminary pilot rationale that identifies the problem to be tested, target users, expected evidence, major assumptions, constraints, and criteria for determining whether the experiment is worthwhile.

Module 2: CBDC Use-Case Selection and Pilot Scope Definition

• Compare retail, wholesale, merchant payment, government payment, offline payment, and cross-border use cases according to policy relevance, feasibility, stakeholder demand, and operational complexity.

• Define pilot participants, transaction types, geographic coverage, operating hours, eligibility rules, transaction limits, duration, and other boundaries needed to control experimental exposure.

• Apply use-case prioritization methods that consider expected benefits, technical readiness, legal constraints, implementation cost, risk, dependencies, and the availability of suitable test participants.

• Establish a pilot charter documenting objectives, scope exclusions, assumptions, deliverables, decision gates, governance responsibilities, resource requirements, and measurable acceptance criteria.

Module 3: CBDC Architecture and Technology Options

• Examine centralized, distributed, account-based, token-based, and hybrid design approaches while distinguishing conceptual models from implementation-specific technology choices.

• Evaluate ledger technologies, transaction processing components, cryptographic mechanisms, wallet infrastructure, hosting arrangements, integration layers, and supporting operational services.

• Compare design trade-offs involving scalability, resilience, privacy, auditability, interoperability, performance, maintainability, vendor dependence, and operational complexity.

• Develop architecture decision records that document requirements, alternatives, evaluation criteria, selected approaches, unresolved questions, dependencies, and conditions requiring further technical investigation.

Module 4: Operating Models, Distribution, and Participant Roles

• Define alternative CBDC operating models, including direct, intermediated, and hybrid arrangements, and assess the responsibilities assigned to the central bank and participating financial institutions.

• Map the roles of issuing and redeeming authorities, wallet providers, payment processors, settlement operators, technology vendors, identity services, and participating merchants or institutions.

• Establish participant onboarding procedures covering eligibility verification, agreements, technical certification, training, account or wallet setup, access provisioning, and support arrangements.

• Design operational responsibilities and service expectations for transaction handling, customer assistance, reconciliation, incident escalation, participant suspension, and pilot exit.

Module 5: Legal Authority, Regulatory Coordination, and Compliance

• Assess the legal and regulatory questions relevant to a CBDC pilot, including issuance authority, legal tender considerations, settlement finality, participant obligations, transaction status, and consumer rights.

• Examine applicable AML/CFT, sanctions screening, customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements within the proposed pilot context.

• Define coordination arrangements among central bank legal teams, financial regulators, data protection authorities, participating institutions, and other competent public bodies.

• Establish documented legal assumptions, approvals, compliance responsibilities, participant disclosures, dispute procedures, and escalation paths for unresolved regulatory questions.

Module 6: Privacy, Digital Identity, and Data Governance

• Map personal, financial, transactional, technical, and operational data collected or generated throughout the CBDC pilot and identify the purpose and lawful basis for each relevant processing activity.

• Compare identity verification, tiered access, pseudonymization, data minimization, selective disclosure, and other privacy measures appropriate to the use case and legal environment.

• Define data access permissions, retention periods, audit logging, consent procedures where applicable, secure sharing arrangements, deletion rules, and responsibilities for data incidents.

• Conduct privacy and data protection assessments that examine re-identification risk, third-party access, analytics requirements, user transparency, and safeguards against inappropriate surveillance or disclosure.

Module 7: Cybersecurity, Fraud Prevention, and Operational Resilience

• Develop threat models addressing account compromise, credential theft, malicious applications, insider threats, compromised devices, denial-of-service attacks, and unauthorized transaction activity.

• Establish security controls covering identity and access management, key management, encryption, secure development, vulnerability management, logging, monitoring, and privileged access.

• Design fraud detection and response processes that combine transaction rules, anomaly monitoring, participant reporting, investigation procedures, and controlled recovery actions.

• Develop resilience arrangements covering backup, recovery objectives, disaster recovery, continuity of critical services, incident communications, tabletop exercises, and restoration testing.

Module 8: Pilot Delivery Planning and Programme Governance

• Build an integrated delivery roadmap covering requirements, architecture, procurement, development, integration, testing, participant readiness, controlled launch, evaluation, and closure.

• Establish a governance structure with steering committees, programme leadership, technical working groups, risk oversight, independent assurance, and clearly assigned decision authorities.

• Develop resource plans, budgets, milestone schedules, dependency registers, issue logs, change procedures, vendor deliverables, and executive reporting routines for controlled pilot delivery.

• Apply stage-gate governance to confirm that legal, operational, technical, security, participant, and risk conditions have been met before proceeding to each new stage.

Module 9: Systems Integration, APIs, and Interoperability

• Map interfaces between CBDC components and existing payment systems, banking platforms, digital identity services, compliance tools, accounting systems, reporting platforms, and participant applications.

• Define API requirements, message formats, authentication, authorization, versioning, error handling, idempotency, monitoring, and integration testing procedures.

• Assess interoperability across participating institutions, payment channels, devices, transaction environments, and relevant domestic or cross-border infrastructure.

• Establish interface ownership, service-level expectations, certification requirements, compatibility testing, dependency monitoring, and procedures for managing integration failures or version changes.

Module 10: Wallets, Transaction Processing, and Settlement Operations

• Examine wallet provisioning, user authentication, balance management, payment initiation, authorization, transaction validation, settlement, confirmations, and transaction history.

• Design transaction lifecycle controls for duplicate requests, timeouts, reversals, refunds, failed transfers, disputed transactions, and inconsistent participant records.

• Establish settlement and reconciliation procedures that compare authoritative records, participant reports, transaction logs, and financial control totals to identify discrepancies.

• Define operational procedures for transaction limits, wallet suspension, account recovery, exception handling, end-of-day processes, and controlled closure of pilot balances or accounts.

Module 11: Offline Payments, Accessibility, and User Experience

• Evaluate offline or intermittently connected payment models, including device capabilities, secure value storage, transaction limits, synchronization rules, and duplicate-spending controls.

• Assess accessibility requirements for people with disabilities, users with limited digital literacy, low-connectivity communities, and participants using a range of supported devices.

• Design usability research and participant testing that examines onboarding, payment completion, error recovery, privacy comprehension, trust, and perceived usefulness.

• Define safeguards for lost devices, compromised credentials, offline transaction disputes, delayed synchronization, device incompatibility, and other limitations that may affect user protection.

Module 12: Testing Strategy, Quality Assurance, and Readiness Assessment

• Develop a test strategy covering unit, integration, system, security, performance, interoperability, usability, operational, recovery, and end-to-end transaction scenarios.

• Establish test environments, representative datasets, test participants, entry and exit criteria, defect severity levels, evidence requirements, and sign-off responsibilities.

• Execute load and stress tests that assess transaction throughput, latency, peak demand, system stability, recovery behavior, and performance under degraded conditions.

• Conduct operational readiness reviews confirming that procedures, trained personnel, support channels, monitoring, incident management, security controls, and participant integrations are sufficiently prepared.

Module 13: Risk Management, Controls, and Incident Governance

• Maintain a consolidated risk register covering policy, legal, technology, cyber, financial, liquidity, fraud, privacy, vendor, participant, operational, reputational, and systemic exposure.

• Define risk ownership, assessment methods, treatment plans, residual risk acceptance, control testing, escalation thresholds, and governance reporting responsibilities.

• Establish incident classification and response procedures for service outages, suspected fraud, data exposure, settlement discrepancies, participant failures, and security events.

• Conduct scenario exercises and post-incident reviews to test decision-making, communications, containment, recovery, accountability, lessons learned, and the effectiveness of corrective actions.

Module 14: Financial Stability, Monetary Policy, and Economic Evaluation

• Identify potential channels through which CBDC design and usage could affect bank deposits, funding costs, liquidity, payment behavior, financial intermediation, and monetary policy transmission.

• Develop monitoring scenarios for adoption levels, balance limits, conversion patterns, bank funding sensitivity, transaction concentration, and other indicators relevant to the pilot's design.

• Distinguish operational observations from broader economic conclusions and assess the limitations of extrapolating small, time-limited pilot results to a national system.

• Establish coordination between pilot delivery teams, monetary policy specialists, financial stability teams, research functions, and supervisory authorities for reviewing emerging evidence.

Module 15: Pilot Metrics, Monitoring, and Evidence-Based Evaluation

• Define measurable indicators for technical availability, transaction success, latency, throughput, reconciliation accuracy, incidents, participant onboarding, user satisfaction, and operational costs.

• Establish data collection, quality assurance, reporting frequency, dashboard ownership, evaluation methods, and procedures for protecting confidential participant information.

• Compare observed outcomes against baseline conditions and predefined hypotheses while documenting confounding factors, sample limitations, participant selection, and changes in operating conditions.

• Prepare evaluation reports that separate verified findings, unresolved questions, policy implications, implementation lessons, and recommendations requiring further evidence.

Module 16: Controlled Launch, Exit Planning, and Future CBDC Directions

• Develop a controlled launch plan with defined participant cohorts, transaction limits, support coverage, communications, monitoring arrangements, rollback triggers, and authorization checkpoints.

• Establish pilot exit procedures covering participant notification, settlement of outstanding transactions, handling of remaining balances, data retention, account closure, vendor access removal, and record preservation.

• Assess emerging directions involving tokenized assets, programmable payments, AI-assisted monitoring, privacy-enhancing technologies, cross-border interoperability, and integration with modern payment infrastructure.

• Prepare a final decision package recommending whether to continue, modify, extend, pause, or close the pilot, supported by evidence, risk analysis, cost considerations, lessons learned, and clearly stated limitations.

Training Approach

This course will be delivered by our skilled trainers who have vast knowledge and experience as expert professionals in the fields. The course is taught in English and through a mix of theory, practical activities, group discussion and case studies. Course manuals and additional training materials will be provided to the participants upon completion of the training.

Tailor-Made Course

This course can also be tailor-made to meet organization requirement. For further inquiries, please contact us on: Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com Tel: +254 721 331 808

Training Venue 

The training will be held at our Upskill Training Centre. We also offer training for a group (at a discount of 10% to 50%) at requested location all over the world. The Onsite course fee covers the course tuition, training materials, two break refreshments, buffet lunch, airport transfers, Upskill gift package, and guided tour.

Visa application, travel expenses, dinners, accommodation, insurance, and other personal expenses are catered by the participant

Certification

Participants will be issued with Upskill certificate upon completion of this course.

Airport Pickup and Accommodation

Airport pickup and accommodation is arranged upon request. For booking contact our Training Coordinator through Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com, +254 721 331 808

Terms of Payment:

Unless otherwise agreed between the two parties’ payment of the course fee should be done 3 working days before commencement of the training so as to enable us to prepare better.