Rwanda Reportedly Considering National Digital Currency

The National Bank of Rwanda is studying options for issuing its own central bank digital currency (CBDC), BNN Bloomberg reports. The central bank is reportedly interested in seeing whether it can take advantage of the technology’s potential benefits to improve financial transaction speed and efficiency and expand the country’s economy growth.

In a recent interview, Financial Stability Director-General Peace Masozera Uwase confirmed that the central bank will be reviewing studies and tests conducted by other central banks in countries like Canada, the Netherlands, and Singapore, to possibly learn from their own experiences with blockchain technology. Uwase noted that the Rwandan central bank has its own questions and concerns that will need to be addressed before any CBDC can be issued:

“There are still concerns about how exactly you convert the entire currency into digital form, how to distribute that and how fast can you process those transactions. Challenges come in, if technology is down how do you deal with such issues? “We will join in once we are ready.”

Rwanda joins a host of other nations around the world that have expressed interest in the potential benefits of a national digital currency. Venezuela launched its Petro cryptocurrency last year, and Uruguay is reportedly already testing its own CBDC. Meanwhile, China recently claimed that its five-year study and development of a national digital currency is complete, and its digitized currency is now ready.