BSP still cool to retail digital money
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is still cool to exploring a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), saying there’s still no clear use case for such a type of digital money in the country.
This, despite significant progress made in the last three years in digitalizing retail payments in the country.
Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, rising demand for digital payments is driving the exploration of retail CBDC.
At a press conference, BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan said the current system for digital retail payments can still meet the transaction needs of consumers, businesses and the government in the Philippines.
“Of course, that (retail CBDC) will always be under consideration except that we and the payments participants have to be convinced that there is indeed something that a retail CBDC can offer that the current digital payments cannot,” Tangonan, head of the BSP’s payments and currency management sector, said.
”At present, we have consumers, businesses and government use of digital payments [and] we see no gap yet,” he added.
CBDC is a digital form of central bank money that is denominated in a unit of account and functions as both a medium of exchange and a store of value.
The BSP last year announced a trial or pilot project for its revived wholesale CBCD initiative, dubbed “Project Agila”. The work is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Wholesale CBDCs may be issued to commercial banks and other financial institutions to settle interbank payments, securities transactions, and cross-border payments, among others. Meanwhile, a retail CBDC can be used by the general public.
