Residents of six Brazilian states and the country’s Federal District can now generate a digital national identity card that they can store on their Apple or Android smartphone and use to verify their ID for multiple uses including accessing public services and contactless cross-border travel to other South American countries within the Mercosur region... More
Residents of Colombia will soon be able to use an updated version of their digital national identity card — known as La Cédula Digital Colombiana — stored on their Apple or Android smartphone as a passport when travelling to eight other South American countries... More
Around 100 countries are now exploring the potential development and issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and the challenges and opportunities identified by these research projects reveal a need for “increased international information-sharing of insights learned”, according to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report... More
Projects to develop a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) for use by consumers and businesses are “more advanced” and “particularly strong” in emerging economies, according to analysis by global consultancy firm PwC... More
Uruguay to launch digital currency, ‘not Bitcoin’ it stresses — Bitcoin.com — “Uruguay’s Central Bank (BCU) formally presented rollout of its pioneering digitization of the Uruguayan peso on 3 November 2017… The plan ‘consists of a test with 10,000 mobile phone users of Antel,’ the release notes, ‘which will last for six months’ and be international… Registered users will be able to interact with merchants as well as peer-to-peer in money exchanges.”
Uruguayan central bank to test digital currency — Latin American Herald Tribune — “‘Instead of carrying around a leather wallet with paper currency,’ people will load electronic currency onto their mobile phones. ‘It’s not that you use the phone to order money transfers, as is done today, but having bills in the cellular and being able to pass them on from one user to another’… Digital bills will be used ‘exactly the same’ as paper bills.”