Ripple, the firm behind the XRP token and Ledger, is now working with the National Bank of Georgia. It is important to note that Ripple has been working with various Central Banking firms as a partner for their CBDC projects.
The Republic of Georgia is the latest addition in the same series. The fintech solution firm is now working with Georgia in order to assist with digitization of the local economy.
National Bank of Georgia governor, Natia Turnava, the acting governor recently noted that the technology offered by Ripple fulfills the requirements of the development department in terms of finance and regulatory supervision.
She attended a meeting with Ripple official James Wallis alongside her colleague Varlam Ebanoidze, the head of financial and technology department at NBG.
The agenda of the meeting was to expand the financial and technical cooperation between the institutions. An official statement issued by the Central Bank of Georgia posted on LinkedIn on 8th June has shared important details from the meeting.
Wallis was working as a Ripple official in the capacity of vice president of Central bank, Alistair Brown, a representative from NBG with the EPAM systems.
NBG Officials Discuss the Potential of Digital Economy
The interview details posted online indicated that Wallis was happy to attend Tbilisi and introduce Brown from EPAM Systems partner with the NBG governor Natia Turnava. It is important to note that EPAM stands for Effective Programming for America and is based in Pennsylvania.
The platform operates as a software solutions provider and specializes in digital product infrastructures. The meeting was focused on finding possible avenues for NBG to aid the process of digitizing the national economy.
This collaboration will add another layer upon the previous partnerships between NBG and Ripple. The digital payments solution provider is set to serve as the technical partners of NBG to pilot a CBDC project dubbed as digital lari.
NBG has rendered plans to move ahead with the CBDC project since 2023. On this account, the bank extended an invitation to firms including Ripple Labs to participate.
After a scrutiny process, Ripple was finalized as an official technical partner for working on the CBDC project called digital lari.
At the same time, Ripple Labs is also working alongside various Central banking firms of many nations such as Bhutan, Palau, Montenegro, and Colombia. The firm has lent support as a technical partner for CBDC pilots in the aforementioned jurisdictions.
Ripple’s CBDC Whitepaper
Towards the end of 2023, Ripple published a CBDC whitepaper to indicate its public support to the digitized version of a legal tender. This 23-page document indicated that CBDCs grant support to boot positive fintech solutions such as tokenization.
At the same time, these products were also set to target the mechanism for converting tangible assets in digitized forms that can be stored and recorded on a blockchain network as per the whitepaper.
At the time, various firms like Ripple have advocated for and offered support for the development and utility of CBDCs. However, there are also a lot of strong arguments against CBDCs that are touted as its biggest setbacks.
A considerable number of legislators and Senators hailing from the United States have raised their voices against CBDC issuance by citing concerns such as individual privacy, unsanctioned government surveillance, and obstructing monetary controls.
CBDC and Financial Surveillance
Another report on the subject has retained that the government’s reaction towards CBDC was a knee-jerk response towards massive traction for crypto and increasing demand for private stablecoins. As per Atlantic Council, 19 out of G20 nations are in the process of developing a native CBDC project regardless of the considerable reservations against it.
Harry Halpin, Nym CEO told media that privacy concerns associated with CBDCs are such that it has increased the trend of financial surveillance. A survey conducted by Trezor last year in the United Kingdom indicated that around 73% of the participants expressed concerns about potential government abuse via CBDCs with two-thirds of the respondents believing that state may use CBDCs to impose monetary controls based on political or ideological agendas.
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