What's New in Payments

IMF reports on digital currencies

IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva

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


What's New in Payments

Central bank begins digital currency pilot in Uruguay

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.”


What's New in Payments

Central Bank of Uruguay to run mobile currency pilot

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.”