The Bank of Israel plans to scale up its testing of digital central bank coins (CBDC).
Research is accelerating for the digital shekel, which has not yet made a final decision on whether to implement it.
According to Bloomberg’s report, the Bank of Israel is using the shekel as its official currency. CBDC started to meet with stakeholders from the sector about the consequences that may be encountered in case of digitalization.
Israel, which is one of the many countries working on CBDCs around the world, including Turkey, started and stopped its work on digital central bank money in 2018 and decided to continue these studies in 2020.
For a possible digital shekel project on the Ethereum blockchain The Bank of Israel, which organized a test run, plans to carry out different tests in order to evaluate the risks and benefits of this project.
Yoav Soffer, responsible for the central bank’s digital shekel project, “Currently, we are increasing both the financial and human resources that we allocate for the digital shekel project. The digital shekel has great potential to increase competition and innovation in the payment technology sector.” made a statement.
Referring to the meetings they conducted with the relevant stakeholders, Soffer said, “Many, many institutions in the private sector want to contribute to the work we do. We’ll take our steps and see what we need and when.” said.
The Bank of Israel considers how it will affect the country’s economy, payment systems, local banks and markets in its assessments about the digital shekel. In the central bank’s May 2021 report, the digital shekel project “It can reduce the risk factors in terms of financial stability and monetary sovereignty” was specified.