The Central Bank of Russia is preparing for a long-term trial of the digital version of the country’s legal tender to ensure that it is a “mature ruble,” the head of the monetary authority emphasized. Regulators have put forward some conditions for the implementation of the new currency project.

Bank of Russia sets conditions for digital ruble currency

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation (CBR) may test Digital ruble More than a year before it finally launched Central Business DistrictThe chairman of the bank, Elvira Nabiullina (Elvira Nabiullina), said at an important financial market committee meeting held by the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. The head of the regulator insists that the digital ruble project can only be realized if certain criteria are met.

The first requirement of the monetary authority is that digital currency can be freely converted into Russian legal tender, cash, and bank currency at a one-to-one ratio. When answering questions about the risks of introducing tokens, Nabi Urina emphasized that this matter is related to currency circulation, and the financial authorities need to be very careful. The business portal Finmarket quoted her as saying:

It should be a real and mature ruble. There will be no discounts or similar things.

The governor of the central bank further explained, prototype The digital ruble may be launched early next year, and then a trial of at least 12 months will be conducted to understand how CBDC works. The governor also stated that another key condition for the success of the digital ruble is to ensure that it will not accelerate inflation.

The Bank of Russia wants citizens to truly choose to use the digital ruble, just as they increasingly choose non-cash payment solutions, which have increased from 30% in 2014 to 75% in the third quarter of 2021. Nabiullina emphasized that this task is not to mint a large number of digital rubles, but to use this new currency to reduce transaction costs. “Current technology allows us to do this. For us, this will be the criterion of success, not the number of digital rubles,” she pointed out.

In June, the Central Bank of Russia established a digital ruble pilot group involving more than a dozen banks and other institutions. The authorities plan to complete the development of the platform prototype in December 2021 and begin testing the CBDC in January 2022 in several stages.Russian officials are planning Fix 13 laws and regulations to adapt to digital currency.

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