It seems that the Russian central bank is considering introducing its own central bank digital currency (CBDC) as the Head of the Central Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina has revealed in an online conference that the central bank might be looking at piloting its CBDC known as Digital Ruble by the end of the next year.
According to a report from the local news agency TASS, Elvira Nabiullina participated in an online conference on Friday on October 23, 2020, in which she has talked about the possibility of the pilot launch for the country’s central bank digital currency. She said that for the country’s economy, the digital ruble project is promising as they view it. Nabiullina said that they do not want to proceed with their central bank digital currency for now as they intend to explore the benefits and risks associated with this project before they go for its launch.
In the early days of October, the Bank of Russia issued a report regarding the potential launch of the digital ruble. In the report, the Russian central bank did not promise for the launch of its CBDC while asking people for their feedback on this matter. The deadline for people to submit their opinions is the 31st of December, 2020.
Nabiullina said that currently, the central bank is getting feedback from the people of the country which will be collected by the end of this year. Once the feedback is collected, the bank will make the decision based on the feedback whether it will launch its central bank digital currency or not.
She added:
“If a decision is made on the feasibility of launching the digital ruble, we will prepare a full-fledged concept. Then, in our opinion, there should be a stage of piloting with a limited number users in order for everything to be worked out, so that we understand how it works. We consider this kind of piloting possible somewhere by the end of next year.”
So the final decision from the Bank of Russia regarding the launch of Digital Ruble is expected after December 31, 2020.
