Governor of Central Bank of Kuwait Basel Al Haroon in an  interview  with John Everington from the Banker, discussed the implementation of Blockchain EKYC solution as well as the ongoing research for CBDCs. According to the governor of Kuwait’s Central Bank, the bank is closely following the experiences of other countries that are issuing CBDCs, as well as the debates taking place among stakeholders in various countries regarding the various pros and cons.   He tells the Banker that they have formed a team of experts from various fields within the CBK to study the topic. According to Al Haroon, any such issuance would need to be accomplished in a way that preserves monetary and financial stability, while maintaining confidence in Kuwait’s payment system. In addition when it comes to blockchain, two local Kuwait banks have obtained the Central Bank’s approval to launch their blockchain based KYC verification and API interfaces. In June 2021, Akcess which utilizes Hyperledger Fab

  During the Financial sector conference 2023 in Riyadh KSA, Mohsen Al Zahrani, Virtual assets and CBDC Program Director at Saudi Arabia’s Central Bank, told Anna Tutova, CEO of Coinstelegram media platform when asked about the regulation of cryptocurrencies in the country, that there is a current forum looking into  that, yet no policy decision has been made yet on different virtual asset types. He noted in his reply during a panel discussion on CBDC, public money in the digital age, “We are working on a policy decision with the Saudi Central Bank and other relevant governmental agencies.” KSA appointed AlZahrani in September 2022 to lead the virtual assets and digital currency program at the Central Bank.   In January 2023, The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) confirmed that the Central Bank is continuing to experiment on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).   SAMA is currently working on a project that focuses on domestic or national wholesale CBDC use case in collaboration with

  On February 24 th 2023 FAFT released its latest grey and black list. For those who are on the grey list it means that these jurisdictions are under increased monitoring and are actively working with the FATF to address strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing. As per the recent announcement by FATF, “When the FATF places a jurisdiction under increased monitoring, it means the country has committed to resolve swiftly the identified strategic deficiencies within agreed timeframes and is subject to increased monitoring. This list is often externally referred to as the “grey list”.” Of the Arab countries on the grey list, was Jordan. It was on the list because of risks in virtual assets. As per FATF one of the reasons for it being on the list was because it needed to address strategic deficiencies including “completing and disseminating the money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessments of legal

  During a discussion panel at the Youth Center in Muscat Oman, the Oman Central Bank governor Tahir Bin Salim Al Amri stated that the Central Bank of Oman along with many other central banks globally do not recognize crypto as currencies. He stated, “It is not a means of payment it is a commodity or an asset of some sort that is being traded mainly for capital gains.” He also noted that while the Central Bank of Oman is keeping an open mind while maintaining caution because of the risky nature of crypto assets. This month the Oman Capital Authority announced that it would be launching its virtual asset framework. Commenting on this the governor Al Amri stated that they were part of the creation of the framework.   He also noted that the Central Bank of Oman was in the process of developing its CBDC ( Central Bank Digital Currency), with a final decision expected to be announced at the end of 2023. The proposed new regulatory framework is envisaged to cover activities such as cr

  The UAE Central Bank announced on Sunday 12 th of February 2023 its nine initiatives for what it calls its financial infrastructure transformation program, the FIT program that will enable the Central Bank of the UAE to be among the top central Banks globally. One of the nine initiatives is the launch of a CBDC for internal and cross border payments, but where is the 10 th , the one that will actually put the UAE on the map as the digital payment hub. Where is the UAE’s Central Bank digital asset payment and remittance regulation or rulebook? So the UAE Central Bank has finally openly stated that it will be launching a CBDC ( Central Bank Digital Currency) for not only cross border payments but also UAE internal national payments. As per the release, the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) would be utilized for cross-border payments and domestic usage in order to address the problems and inefficiency of cross-border payments and help drive innovation for domestic payments respect

  During the World Economic Forum’s session ’ Financial Institutions innovating under pressure’ The Saudi Minister of Finance Mohammed al-Jadaan stated that while CBDCs have privacy issues they are a fantastic tool in developing countries. While the panel discussed the risks that crypto and new technologies were posing especially given that crypto losses were over $1 trillion in 2022, most agreed that the regulation was a key element in mitigating these risks. Saudi Finance Minister Al Jadaan also believes that the real risks of these innovations haven’t even been seen yet, and the one incident with the loss of 12 zeros has triggered a lot of thinking of what needs to be done. He believes that Central Banks, traditional financial institutions and even innovators in Fintech need to discuss how to deal with Anti Money laundering issues, terrorism financing and entities that use these technologies to circumvent the regulatory framework. When discussing CBDC (Central Bank Digital C

  At the end of 2022 the Prime Minister of Algeria, Aimene Benabderrahmane announced that the Central Bank of Algeria is intending to adopt a national digital currency under the name of "Algerian digital dinar" as part of the digitalization of payments. In his speech the Prime Minister stated, “One of the main workshops held at the Central Bank of Algeria, was under the theme digital payments that would allow the adoption of a digital form of money. It would ensure that the issuance, management and control of the digital currency, the Algerian digital dinar would be under the Central Bank.” As reported by the Algeria Press Service these statements were made on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the Central Banks Future Challenges conference organized by the Bank of Algeria. "In the digital age, the need to strengthen the security and control of payment systems will undoubtedly be felt, new challenges that the Bank of Algeria must face", added the Prime

  Egyptian Central bank has announced that it is currently studying the implementation of CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) which should offer a safer and more secure replacement to current cryptocurrencies and the risks associated with them while making use of digital economy. The Egyptian Central Bank in its 2021 financial stability report stated that it had created an internal and external committee which includes representatives from different Ministerial entities headed by the governor of the Central Bank to study the implementation of CBDCs in Egypt. It also noted that it is working with external counterparts to study the potential risks and benefits of CBDC implementations.  Cryptocurrency trading in Egypt is still not regulated and the Central Bank of Egypt has on several occasions mentioned the risk involved in dealing with cryptocurrencies and the fact that it is illegal in the country to do so. In September, the central bank of Egypt reiterated its warning against

  There are 112 countries that are — in one way or another — exploring central bank digital currency (CBDC). Of this number, 11 countries have launched their own CBDCs, 15 are piloting, 26 are developing and 46 are researching. This trend appears to have reached the UAE, with the country’s central bank collaborating with various international agencies. In 2019, the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) piloted a wholesale CBDC project with Saudi Central Bank named of “ABER.” A final report was published in 2020, which showed that “the distributed ledger technology would enable central banks to develop payments systems at both local and cross-border levels.” More recently, the CBUAE — along with the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre and the central banks of Hong Kong, Thailand and China — implemented Project mBridge, a joint initiative experimenting with cross-border payments using a custom-built common platform based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) upon which multiple central b

  UAE Central Bank officials have called for a comprehensive regulatory framework for central digital currencies that would facilitate, accelerate and reduce the cost of cross border monetary operations. The call came during UAE's Central Bank participation at the fifth International Financial Architecture (IFA) Working Group meeting within the G20 Finance Track for 2022, which was held in a hybrid format on 22nd and 23rd September 2022. Thiscomes after The Innovation Hub of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, BIS (Bank of International Settlements) and the Central Bank of the UAE announced on twitter the completion of the first CBDC pilot involving real value transactions and four jurisdictions, using mBridge, custom developed DLT platform. As per the tweet, 20 banks participated in the final CBDC pilot, with over 160 transfers and FX exchanges carried out, totaling $171 million HK dollars ( $22 million)  in transfers and FX exchanges and $91 HK million in issuances equivalent

  The Saudi Central Bank, better known as SAMA, has appointed Mohsen AlZahrani, former Managing Director of Financial Services at Accenture KSA as Virtual Assets and CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) program Lead. AlZahrani recently announced this on his LinkedIn profile. This is a significant announcement given that KSA Central Bank has been working on its CBDC project since it announced its Aber project with UAE back in 2019. At the time both The Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) and the United Arab Emirates Central Bank (UAECB) clarified in a joint statement that one of the objectives of launching the common digital currency project ” Aber” is for use in financial settlements between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and UAE through Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers technologies.   It was known that IBM was one of the vendors working on the project. In addition six commercial banks, three from UAE and three from KSA participated in the joint digital currency project “Abe

  This week Qatar made headlines in the Blockchain, crypto, NFT and metaverse scene on several fronts. While the CEO of Qatar   Sovereign Wealth Fund praised Blockchain but shunned crypto, Qatar’s Central Bank Governor stated that crypto assets are a technology innovation that will take us to a new era of fast accessible payments and financial services. Topping all this was Qatar Airways increased foray into the realm of the metaverse, and NFTs. It seems that while the government of Qatar has yet to make up its mind on whether it wants to enter the era of cryptocurrencies, or whether they agree that crypto will have to be dealt with at one point or another, they are taking steps towards integrating elements of blockchain and CBDC into their strategies. During the Qatar Economic Forum Qatar Central Bank Governor Bandar Bin Mohammed Bin Saoud Al Thani admitted that Qatar is in the foundation stage of investigating a central bank Digital Currency (CBDC). As he noted, “Many central ba

The Executive President of the Central Bank of Oman, Mr. Tahir Salim Al Amri, commented during the 7t Edition of the new Age Banking Summit on the topic of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) As per a tweet from Oman News Agency stated, “The Central Bank of Oman is working to issue its own CBDC. Many central banks are studying the possibility of issuing their own CBDCs and the Central Bank of Oman is committed to supporting innovation in the financial sector." He also mentioned that work was underway to open banking API services and overcoming challenges that face the digitization sector, and stressed the importance of cyber security. In April 2022, Oman Capital Market Authority announced that it would incorporate real estate tokenization within its virtual assets regulation as well as license crypto exchanges. The Oman virtual asset regulation will be finalized by Q3 of 2022. Kemal Rizadi, Advisor at the Oman Capital Market Authority made these comments during the

WadzPay will list its token on a Middle East crypto asset Exchange soon, according to its Group CEO. In a tweet WadzPay CEO Anish Jain states “We will also expand presence to regional exchanges in UAE, India, Africa and South America.” The WadzPay ecosystem provides infrastructure for emerging CBDC and Stable coin technologies allowing governments and institutions to sandbox or commercialize programs both at a domestic or international level. WadzPay is building an interoperable and agnostic blockchain-based payments ecosystem. The company was founded in 2018 in Singapore and is currently operating in South East Asia, South Asia, Middle East and Africa. As per their website the company saw the potential for CBDC and Digital Assets leading the next revolution in the payments industry: by enabling faster payments, improvements in security, cost efficiency with optionality. They claim to be working with large international payment companies, banks and other large global companies t