Ghana’s foremost bank, the Bank of Ghana (BoG), starting September this year will commence the piloting of the digital cedi in a sandbox environment.
This is according to the First Deputy Governor of the BoG, Dr Maxwell Opoku-Afari.
Making the disclosure to media on the sidelines of the Journalist for Business Advocacy Financial Literacy Training Workshop, the First Deputy Governor averred the piloting of the digital cedi in a sandbox environment is to help the Central Bank test and enhance the use of the digital currency before its full rollout into the country’s financial system.
“So we want to start rolling it out in a pilot phase in a sandbox environment, learn lessons from it and enhance it and then once the lessons have been learnt, we come out and open it out for the entire population.”
“The piloting phase will be determined by the programme framework – processes to developing the digital cedi – which will end in September, and from there we will pilot it. But definitely the digital cedi will be introduced into the pilot phase before the end of the year,” he stated.
Adding the Central Bank’s approval for the use of the digital currency by the Ghanaian citizenry will be determined on how successful the piloting of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) goes.
The sandBox pilot programme provides a supportive and controlled policy environment that enables firms particularly FinTechs to test innovative products, services and business models under the supervision of the BoG, to assess the usefulness, viability and safety of innovations in the financial services industry.
It allows innovations to be tested in an area that is outside the regulatory environment so that when there are errors it does not impact on the systemic environment.
BoG completes design of digital cedi
Meanwhile, Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Ernest Addison, has said plans are far advanced in the Central Bank’s bid to issue its own digital currency.
Making the disclosure at the 100th Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) press briefing, Dr Addison noted the Bank has completed the first phase of the process which is the preferred design for the digital currency.
The second phase the Governor noted, constitute the implementation and piloting phase, which is currently being worked on by the Bank.
“We are quite advanced in the process to issue a digital currency, the first phase was the design of the electronic system and the second phase which is where we are currently, which is to see to the implementation and piloting phase of the digital currency,” he stated.
“After the pilot phase, we will then know if the digital currency is feasible and if not, what needs to be done to make it better,” he added.
