{"id":317600,"date":"2019-05-19T18:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T16:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=317600"},"modified":"2019-05-17T17:28:18","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T15:28:18","slug":"reserve-bank-explains-plans-for-south-african-digital-currency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/317600\/reserve-bank-explains-plans-for-south-african-digital-currency\/","title":{"rendered":"Reserve Bank explains plans for a South African digital currency"},"content":{"rendered":"

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is currently investigating the possibility of a digital currency backed by the rand<\/a><\/strong>, and hopes to experiment with at least three different designs and\/or deployment models during 2019.<\/p>\n

Speaking to BusinessTech, the SARB said that it is in the process of engaging with possible vendors to explore the feasibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as electronic legal tender (ELT).<\/p>\n

“Rapid technological changes have prompted major central banks across the globe to consider electronic forms of cash,” it said.<\/p>\n

“Since late 2016, SARB\u2019s Currency Management Department has conducted extensive research to understand the case for such an electronic form of cash, called electronic legal tender (ELT).<\/p>\n

“This would be a domestic, general purpose central bank digital currency (CBDC), issued and backed by the SARB.”<\/p>\n

The SARB said that it does not presently have a formal position on the feasibility of issuing an ELT, however, it is proactively seeking to understand the policy and other implications of issuing one.<\/p>\n

It said that the research conducted to date focused primarily on developing an understanding of the various forms of public and private virtual currencies, as well as the potential implications should a central bank decide to issue a general purpose CBDC.<\/p>\n

“The next phase will be practical hands-on experimentation of potential design models in an innovation lab (sandpit) environment by considering available emerging technologies as well as security and risk management aspects,” it said,<\/p>\n

“The SARB project team has documented a number of use cases for testing purposes, and is now in the process of identifying vendors to participate in the innovation lab experimentation.<\/p>\n

“Final outcomes from the experimentation will be used as input to determine the SARB\u2019s position on CBDC as ELT,” it said.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Reserve Bank wants to test a digital currency backed by the rand<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is currently investigating the possibility of a digital currency backed by the rand, and hopes to experiment with at least three different designs and\/or deployment models during 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":114832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[26,3619],"class_list":["post-317600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-headline","tag-sarb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317600","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=317600"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317652,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317600\/revisions\/317652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}