According to the Correio Braziliense report, Brazilians could be ready for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in 2022. Roberto Campos Neto, the president of Banco Central (Brazil’s central bank), stated that the country’s central bank had already undertaken measures to modernize the Brazilian financial system, which has made a CBDC the natural outcome. The central bank plans to enable peer-to-peer and business-to-business transactions in 10 seconds or less using a cell phone, internet banking, or ATMs beginning in November.
“A CBDC distinguishes itself from cryptocurrencies without national trust.”
An open banking system allows for the exchange of user information between banks that enables customers to switch more easily. The president of the central bank said, “A CBDC distinguishes itself from cryptocurrencies without national trust, like Bitcoin, because it is just a new form of representation of the currency already issued by the national monetary authority.” The central bank of Brazil, Banco Central, has already started laying the groundwork for its national digital currency. Earlier, the central bank announced that it had formed a dedicated group to assess how digital currency could fit the national payments ecosystem and its impact on the Brazilian economy. The president had said that he expected the group to present their findings on the matter within 6-12 months.
Central banks across countries continue to explore CBDCs.
Major countries like the United States and China are enhancing their research to possibly issue their own national digital currencies with the rise of non-face-to-face transactions. The Bank for International Settlements report revealed that in 2020, worldwide internet searches for CBDCs surpassed searches for Bitcoin BTC and Facebook’s Libra, as reported previously. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is currently conducting trials of its national digital currency, dubbed DCEP, in several cities and is all set to launch soon. The bank had earlier mentioned that it was only testing DCEP for small retail transactions.
