At a meeting of the Association of Banks of Russia, both the central bank governor and deputy governor gave an update on the digital ruble. Trials for the central bank digital currency (CBDC) started in August last year after the passage of legislation. It started with a dozen banks, 600 end users and 30 merchants across 11 cities. The plan is to begin to roll out the CBDC next year.
So far there have been 25,000 transactions, with 19,000 for person-to-person payments. The balance involved consumers paying businesses. Around 3,500 payments involved smart contracts. According to the comments made, initially transactions were too slow.
“In the beginning, of course, we saw errors on the banks’ side,” said Bank of Russia Deputy Governor Olga Skorobogatova, according to Interfax. “Let me remind you that banks here act as intermediaries; through their mobile application, a person opens a wallet and then carries out transactions. But banks very quickly eliminated all errors, and today we have not made such errors.”
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