Latin American country Peru has joined the list of countries that are actively developing a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Central Reserve Bank of Peru President Julio Velarde announced at the Annual Conference of Executives with business leaders in Lima recently that the country intends to partner with India, Singapore, and Hong Kong to develop its own CBDC.
Velarde also spoke about the current state of Peru’s economy and its interest in joining the recent CBDC trend.
“I think the payment system we are going to have eight years from now in the world is going to be completely different from the current one… Even the financial system will probably be quite different,” Velarde said.
“We won’t be the first, because we don’t have the resources to be first and face those risks. But we don’t want to fall behind. We are at least at the same level or maybe even further ahead than similarly-sized countries, although behind Mexico and Brazil,” Velarde added.
According to a Twitter post by a private non-profit association, IPAE Asociación Empresarial, Velarde explained that Peru had overcome the setback of the pandemic, and it intends to develop strategies that will bring about innovations in the finance sector.
Although the country is partnering with countries with more advanced experience in developing central bank-backed digital currencies, Velarde said Peru is not ready to implement this type of financial solution anytime soon.
Other countries and CBDC development
In recent times, many countries worldwide are already researching and developing their own CBDC. As CoinGeek reported a few months ago, the Bahamas launched a Sand Dollar CBDC. While the Bank of Jamaica has partnered with an Ireland-based company—eCurrency Mint—to pilot its CBDC. Brazil and Mexico are already planning to implement their CBDC by 2023. And although El Salvador doesn’t have its own CBDC, the country adopted Bitcoin as it’s legal tender last September.
One of the partners for the Peru CBDC, the Reserve Bank of India, plans to launch a trial implementation of the digital rupee before the end of 2021. Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das previously said: “We are being extremely careful about it because it’s a completely new product, not just for RBI but globally.”
Hong Kong’s Monetary Authority and the Monetary Authority of Singapore also started exploring the possibility of developing a CBDC.
To learn more about central bank digital currencies and some of the design decisions that need to be considered when creating and launching it, read nChain’s CBDC playbook.
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