R3 was chosen by UAE Central Bank as its technology partner to design and build a CBDC for the first phase of the central bank’s CBDC project because it is a permissioned based DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) that decentralize assets privately and works well in regulated industries, but more importantly is its interoperability and asset fluidity. R3 will not only assist UAE’s Central Bank in developing a CBDC but also in tokenizing financial and non-financial activities, in addition to the digitalization of other financial services.   R3 offers interoperable CBDC solution LaraontheBlock interviewed R3 to learn more about their role in UAE’s CBDC project.   Alisa DiCaprio, Chief Economist at R3 when asked why R3 was chosen and not another Blockchain technology provider replied, “R3’s Corda is the world’s leading permissioned distributed application platform and is specifically designed to work in highly regulated environments with today’s financial services industr...

  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 res...

The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) released a press release where it 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 local banks and FinTech's. Experts explained to LaraontheBlock that this is a CBDC for local wholesale bank settlements.  This project is part of SAMA's ongoing research and experimentation on CBDC. SAMA is seeking to research and explore the economic impact, market readiness, and  potential robust and fast applications of a CBDC based payment solution.  As per the news, SAMA seeks to review policy, legal and regulatory considerations before moving to the next phases of the CBDC journey to contribute to achieving the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030. H.E. Fahad Almubarak, Governor of SAMA stated "Local banks and payment companies will always be a cornerstone of this project and its ...

  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 Digit...

  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 warnin...

  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 centr...

  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 pro...

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...