Manila, Wednesday, July 31, 2024 – The Central Bank of the Philippines announced on July 25 it had planned to roll out the Digital Currency by 2029 or within the six-year tenure of incumbent Governor Eli Remolona Jr.
It said the Wholesale CBDC project dubbed Agila is now progressing with the phase of proof-of-concept.
BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan said that this was an innovative payment instrument.
“In fact, there’s no central bank in the world that has already launched wholesale CBDC, with the exception of the Swiss National Bank,” Tangonan stated.1
The Agila project began in December 2022, comprising two phases.
The evaluation of wholesale CBDC to enhance the large-value payment system and the empowerment of public with the required know-how on CBDC technology are among the objectives of this project.
The first phase of the pilot test ended in July 2023, choosing Hyperledger Fabric as its distributed ledger technology.
It is expected that a report including the findings and assessments regarding the sandbox test will be released at the end of the project by end of this year.
Analysts said that as Agila ventures on a new phase, banks and the BSP must fully understand CBDC operations to ensure project success.
Accessibility to interbank payments, secure transactions, and cross-border payments will be functional with wholesale CBDC issuance.
Wholesale CBDCs will be issued to commercial banks and other financial institutions.
- philstar.com: https://www.philstar.com/business/2024/07/25/2372672/bsp-issued-digital-currencies-likely-2029[↩]
