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Philippines: BSP plans pilot digital currency
THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) plans to launch a pilot central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the near future, its head said.
“As next step, the BSP targets to roll out in the near term, a pilot CBDC implementation which we call Project CBDCPh,” Bangko Sentral Governor Benjamin Diokno was quoted as saying in a statement released by the central bank on Wednesday.
He went on to say that the project’s goal is to establish organizational capacity and practical knowledge of the important features of CBDC that are relevant to a use case involving reducing frictions in the national payment system.
“We can say that CBDC may be an idea whose time has come,” Diokno said, “but certainly, it has many aspects that need to be better understood.”
The BSP said in 2021, it initiated an exploratory study on CBDC, followed by a national payment system assessment to find appropriate use cases for digital fiat money.
The plan was unveiled by Diokno during the Knowledge Exchange Program on CBDC that the Bangko Sentral said it co-hosted with the Alliance for Financial Inclusion from March 1 to 3 this year.
It emphasized that “this is part of [the] ongoing efforts to explore and evaluate potential use cases of the technology.”
Central banks, international organizations, policy think tanks, financial service providers and other commercial entities were among the participants in the three-day knowledge sharing event, the Bangko Sentral noted.
The program looked at the potential and the impact of CBDC on financial inclusion, as well as the numerous design considerations and implementation issues, as well as the technology behind it.
Participants from the central banks of Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Armenia, the Bahamas, Ghana and Sweden attended the three-day virtual knowledge sharing event, in addition to the BSP.
The Bangko Sentral said it is a founding member of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, a global network of central banks and regulatory financial institutions with 100 members from 89 countries.
According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), CBDCs are digital money denominated in the national unit of account. It also constitutes a central bank liability.
Defined further, a “general purpose” or “retail” CBDC is one intended to be a digital equivalent of currency for use by end-users such as households and enterprises.
“As such, it offers a new option to the general public for holding money. CBDC is different from cash as it comes in a digital form unlike physical coins and banknotes,” the BIS said.
Source:https://www.manilatimes.net/2022/03/10/business/top-business/bsp-plans-pilot-digital-currency/1835698