Chea Serey, the Governor of the Bank of Cambodia, has inked numerous deals to enable cross border payments with Bakong, the country’s digital currency payment system. This month it signed deals with three Korean banks to help migrant workers remit funds home. In an interview with the Nikkei, the central bank governor emphasized the move is part of a strategy to encourage the use of the local currency, the riel, in an economy where more than 80% of transactions use U.S. dollars.
In 2020 the National Bank of Cambodia launched its Bakong tokenized currency payment system. While it was initially heralded as the first live central bank digital currency (CBDC), it’s closer to being a tokenized deposit system using central bank infrastructure. The Bakong app links to both riel and dollar bank balances, although users don’t need a bank account.
Bakong has been a huge success, with ten million wallets out of a population of 17 million and $70 billion in transactions since launch.
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