Iran is making progress with its plans for a central bank digital currency (CBDC), having finished the necessary research for the future introduction of a digital rial.
According to a formal announcement made by the Monetary and Banking Research Institute, the research arm of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), the pre-pilot stage of developing Iran’s CBDC has been completed (MBRI).
The revelation was revealed on February 20 at the ninth annual conference on electronic banking and payment systems by Mohammad Reza Mani Yekta, director of the CBI office for overseeing payment systems. He mentioned that although Iran’s central bank wants to gradually deploy the CBDC pilot in the nation’s payment system, it has plans to expand its scope.
“The pre-pilot phase successfully concluded with significant accomplishments. According to Mani Yekta, the initiative will soon be introduced to new ecosystems and used by more users
The government emphasised that a possible digital rial would follow the same regulations as rial banknotes. Mani Yekta further mentioned that the CBDC infrastructure would replicate some blockchain elements and that a digital rial would be distributed to people and banks.
Ten Iranian banks have apparently applied to participate in the digital rial project, according to Mani Yekta. During the experimental phase, banks like Bank Melli, Bank Mellat, and Bank Tejarat were participating. According to reports, all banks and credit institutions in Iran will soon begin to provide electronic wallets for using the new digital currency.
Following years of preliminary research since 2017, the CBI began planning to conduct a CBDC pilot in January 2022, as previously reported. According to reports, the regulator began implementing a CBDC trial in September 2022 with the goal of enhancing financial inclusion and competing with international stablecoins.
The “crypto rial,” Iran’s digital rial project, is pegged 1:1 to the Iranian rial, the country’s official currency. According to reports, the digital currency is powered by a platform called Borna that was created using IBM’s open-source enterprise blockchain platform Hyperledger Fabric. The announcement comes as Iranian authorities are ready to meet with Elvira Nabiullina, governor of the Bank of Russia, who is scheduled to visit Iran soon. According to reports, Russia and Iran have been collaborating to develop a stablecoin backed by gold that could be used as payment in international trade.
