Norges Bank has concluded that issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is not immediately necessary, citing Norway’s resilient and efficient payments infrastructure as the main reason. The December 2025 decision follows several years of CBDC experimentation and reflects a judgement that the marginal benefits of a digital krone are currently limited.

Operational strength over immediate CBDC deployment

Norges Bank’s assessment focuses on four operational strengths of the existing payments system: stable operations, rapid settlement times, low economic costs and robust contingency arrangements that collectively reduce the need for a CBDC. These attributes are judged to offset concerns about declining cash usage, and the bank also signalled caution on wholesale CBDCs, pointing to unproven benefits and the lack of mature infrastructure and common standards for interbank settlement.

The central bank characterizes its position as pragmatic rather than ideological: it explicitly presents the decision as a temporary pause and reserves the option to issue a CBDC if future changes in the payments landscape or a material erosion of cash usage create a clear necessity. This stance keeps policy optionality intact while avoiding premature commitment to an immature technology stack.

Norges Bank’s evaluation draws on concrete experimentation rather than theory alone. Past work included token-based settlement tests using distributed-ledger technology and participation in Project Icebreaker in 2023, an international trial exploring new cross-border retail CBDC architectures. Project leadership and internal directors have indicated that any future CBDC design would be intended to coexist with cash and existing digital forms of money, not replace them.

The analysis catalogues familiar CBDC trade-offs, weighing efficiency and inclusion against privacy and stability concerns. Potential gains in payment efficiency and financial inclusion are set against risks such as reduced transaction privacy and the possibility of commercial bank deposit substitution, with CBDC defined as a digital form of central bank money that is a direct liability of the central bank and widely available to the public.

Norges Bank’s stance is framed within a mixed global landscape. Other central banks are prioritizing upgrades to existing payment systems or deferring retail CBDC rollouts while monitoring developments such as the digital euro debate and the IMF’s two-tier distribution model framing. The bank stresses that operational readiness and common standards will be prerequisites for viable cross-border or interoperable CBDC solutions.

Policy caveats in the reasoning include readiness for wholesale solutions and openness to external standard-setting. Norges Bank indicates interest in leveraging mature solutions from other jurisdictions, including the potential adoption of European standards if broader regional initiatives crystallize. The overarching message is one of preferring operational sufficiency over technological novelty while keeping the option to act if systemic conditions change.