The National Bank of Rwanda (NBR) Plans to Have Its Own Digital Currency

Central banking institutions across the globe are showing great interest on having their own digital currencies. Rwanda’s central bank, the National Bank of Rwanda, is currently researching and studying on having a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

According to the Bloomberg report, the central bank is studying how a CBDC can help to bolster the country’s economic strength as well as improve transaction efficiency.

But, Financial Stability Director-General Peace Masozera Uwase says that they would implement this project only after sufficient groundwork and testing.

He said: “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.”

Furthermore, Uwase said that the National Bank of Rwanda will see efforts from other central banks and developed economies like Singapore, Canada, and Netherlands. This means that it will certainly consider global action before deciding upon the launch.

Three months back, the NBR released a report on cryptocurrency scams and asked investors to stay aware of it. It also released a list of different cryptocurrency scams running in the country and released tips for investors to protect themselves from falling prey to such con artists.

After completely banning public digital currencies in 2017, China’s central bank is aggressively working on its own central bank digital currency. China’s central bank - People’s Bank of China (PBoC) - says that with giants like Facebook planning to launch its Libra currency, it is important for them to counter their competition before they dominate the global financial space.

PBoC’s research bureau director Wang Xin said “If [Libra] is widely used for payments, cross-border payments in particular, would it be able to function like money and accordingly have a large influence on monetary policy, financial stability and the international monetary system?”