Ghana to launch CBDC project in September

In a bid to improve the economy and financial services of the country, the Bank of Ghana has announced that it will pilot a central bank digital currency (CBDC) starting in September.

Maxwell Opoku-Afari, the First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), told a local news outlet on Friday that the move would help foster financial inclusion while promoting the stability and efficiency of Ghana’s existing payment infrastructure. He said:

We have to take out time to design it with all the security features and so have started it in a pilot phase through what we call a sand-box to learn lessons before we open it up to the general public […] The piloting phase is expected to start by September and the success rate will determine the step.'

A plan on the ongoing E-cedi launch was first announced in June when the Governor of Ghana’s Central Bank, Ernest Addison, disclosed that the country is in the process of launching its own digital currency.

The Bank of Ghana was one of the first African Central Banks to declare that we were working on a digital currency looking at the concept of an e-cedi.

In a June press statement, Addison noted that the CBDC would pass through three phases before going into circulation, with the third phase being the pilot phase “where a few people would be able to use the digital cedi on the mobile applications.”

The CBDC space is heating up as more countries jump on the train. As reported by BTC PEERS, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have suggesting that countries embrace CBDCs.

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