The president of Brazil’s central bank thinks the country’s national digital currency will be ready for launch by 2022.
At a Bloomberg-promoted event, Banco Central (BC) president Robert Campos Neto said that two years from now, Brazil will have the infrastructure for interoperable instant payments and an international, convertible and credible currency required for a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
In a recent press release, BC announced that digital currency will improve “commercial transactions between people and even between countries.”
Earlier this year, BC set up an intergovernmental 12-member study group to assess the security and regulatory compliance of digital currencies. The group will report its findings within a year.
Neto says the process of digitizing payments has already started in Brazil through a central bank initiative called the BC # Agenda. Brazil’s instant payment system or PIX, announced in February, will roll out in November.
Along with BC’s Open Banking initiative which allows transaction details to be shared safely and at customers’ discretion, PIX will make payments more competitive, transparent, and inclusive.
Neto also notes that a bill introduced by the bank in 2019 proposing the modernization of the Brazilian exchange system is like to be voted on in the next two weeks.
