The Central Bank of Ghana will soon test its digital currency

The deputy head of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Maxwell Opoku-Efari, said the organization is committed to conducting pilot transactions for the sale of goods and services using digital currency. The country’s central bank intends to work out the issue of large-scale launch of the state cryptocurrency on the Blockchain (CBDC).

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The country’s financial system to be digitized

This issue was raised during the Opoku Efari online meeting with representatives of banks and payment operators with businesses in Ghana. A representative of the Central Bank of Ghana said that the Office of Financial Technologies and Innovation, created on May 5th, works in the structure of the organization. The task of the new structure is to digitalize the country’s financial system. The Office also serves as a tool “for developing regulatory documents, which should be focused on the promotion of financial technology.”

Since 2016, the Bank of Ghana has also created the Department of Payment Systems, whose tasks include the search for modern innovations that could be implemented in interbank financial relations. Opoku-Efari said that just the work of this department led to the emergence of a special structural unit, which began to work intensively with financial technologies. In particular, a project of the Bank of Ghana and the Commercial Bank of Ghana to launch electronic money has already been implemented.

The CBDC itself will first be tested as part of an experimental regulatory platform established under the Bank of Ghana. The representative of the central bank noted: “Digital financial technologies will determine the development of the banking sector in the future.”

The need to use “figures” in the organization is explained by the fact that the volume of money transactions, including through mobile applications, has increased almost twice in the country over the past three years.

Africa has huge potential for the use of cryptocurrencies

Earlier, Jack Dorsey, the founder of the social network Twitter and the cryptographic company Square, also talked about the great potential for the use of blockchain and cryptocurrency in Africa. After a visit to Nigeria, as well as Ghana, another country where, according to Google Trends, there has been an increase in interest in Bitcoin during the year, Dorsey said that “Africa will play a decisive role in the fate of Bitcoin.”

In addition to Ghana, the National Bank of Rwanda announced the development of its own state-owned cryptocurrency, noting that the SBDC can “improve transaction efficiency, as well as become a driver of economic growth.”

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which is an important “opinion leader” for the central banks of most countries of the world, made a report in which it said that regulators in different countries should seriously consider launching their own cryptocurrencies (CBDC).

BIS experts emphasized that their recommendation is that CBDC has strengths that are very important when humanity is struggling with the coronavirus pandemic. In particular, the report stated that the situation with the coronavirus shifts the global financial system towards greater use of digital payments. In addition, their study of the current situation with the organization of money circulation in the world led to the conclusion that the use of CBDC, that is, digital money, may be preferable not only to cash but even to bank cards, especially if it is not a contactless payment method.

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(Featured image by PDPics via Pixabay)

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First published in CLICK CHAIN, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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