The Bank of Ghana announced on Wednesday, August 11, that it has officially launched cooperation with Giesecke+Devrient, a German company specialising in providing banknotes and securities printing, in conducting a pilot project for its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in West Africa Ghana.
Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) is a German company headquartered in Munich that provides banknote and securities printing, smart cards, and cash handling systems.
To promote the development of the “Digital Ghana Agenda”, the Bank of Ghana signed an agreement with a German currency technology provider. The agreement is to provide this country with a population of 30 million with its unique CBDC solution Filia to accelerate the issuance of digital forms of the Ghanaian national currency Cedi and the realisation of the digitisation of government services.
The digital form of its currency, Cedi, is called Digital Cedi or “e-Cedi”, which promotes payments without bank accounts, contracts, or smartphones as a digital alternative to cash to realize diversified payment forms.
The security, high availability, and flexibility of G+D’s CBDC solution Filia can just support safe and continuous offline payments without a network connection.
The Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest K. Y. Addision, has stated that:
“From all indications, the concept has a significant role to play in the future of financial service delivery globally. This project is a significant step towards positioning Ghana to take full advantage of this emerging concept.”
The solution will be divided into three phases to be tested in the trial phase in terms of banks, payment service providers, merchants, consumers, and other relevant stakeholders.
The three phases include the design phase that defines all the framework parameters of the CBDC pilot; the implementation phase that meets and adapts to the national conditions of Ghana, and the pilot phase of field testing under different backgrounds.
Ghana has confirmed that it is on the hunt for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) through the Bank of Ghana’s deputy governor, Dr. Maxwell Opoku-Afari, as reported by Blockchain.News on June 11, 2020.
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