{"id":154849,"date":"2017-02-03T10:08:23","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T08:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=154849"},"modified":"2017-02-03T10:08:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T08:08:23","slug":"south-african-reserve-bank-considering-a-national-digital-currency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/154849\/south-african-reserve-bank-considering-a-national-digital-currency\/","title":{"rendered":"South African Reserve Bank considering a national digital currency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) is open to issuing a national digital currency, which would likely be based on Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) according to a 2 February report by <span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneyweb.co.za\/news\/tech\/south-africa-open-to-digital-currency\/\" target=\"_blank\">Moneyweb<\/a>.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we go the route of issuing a digital currency, the objective would be to take advantage of emerging technologies so that we reap the benefits,\u201d said Tim Masela, head of the National Payments System at the Sarb.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, African nations are leading the way on digital currencies with\u00a0Tunisia said to be the only nation to have successfully issued a digital currency. In addition, a digital version of the West African franc is expected to begin rolling out in Senegal later this year.<\/p>\n<p>These digital currecnies makes sense, said Masela, because of their convenience of use, a wide reach, real-time settlements and a reduced cost of use. However, Sarb is\u00a0also mindful of the risks of a crypto-currency highlighting possible cyber-attacks and\u00a0unregulated nature\u00a0of the emerging business models as the biggest concerns.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe foresee that these benefits could be realised, which would be good for the transacting public. But of course, the risks have to be borne in mind as well and that\u2019s what we want to balance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe proponents of the technology say \u2018you don\u2019t need to regulate it; it will self-regulate\u2019. We don\u2019t have an idea of how that will happen, we still need to reflect on this and need a good case [to show] that it can self-regulate. Otherwise, we believe that if it is not regulated and things go wrong, it could have a spillover effect into the financial systems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/154541\/the-reality-of-disposable-income-in-south-africa-were-getting-poorer\/\" target=\"_blank\">The reality of disposable income in South Africa \u2013 we\u2019re getting poorer<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) is open to issuing a national digital currency, which would likely be based on Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) according to a 2 February report by Moneyweb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":52539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-154849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-active"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154849"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154863,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154849\/revisions\/154863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}