Plans To Switch From Cash To Cryptocurrency Will Not Happen Anytime Soon – Bank of Thailand Governor

News | November 19, 2018 By:

Veerathai Santiprabhob, governor of the Bank of Thailand (BoT), the country’s central bank, said that a plan to use cryptocurrency, instead of cash, will not happen in Thailand within the next three to five years.

Veerathai comments were made after Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF), said last week that central banks should work quickly in establishing digital currency for burgeoning networks of private financial transactions to prevent “too much power falling into the hands of a small number of outsized private payment providers.”

According to Veerathai, issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in developed countries is not easy and takes time because of complication, readiness of people and the inefficiency of existing technology.

“New states and developing countries will take a long time to switch to using digital currency and it will not happen within the next three to five years,” Veerathai said. “Sweden, for example, is now using an e-Payment system almost entirely, still finds that using digital currency is certainly a difficult task and people in the country must be well prepared first.”

While the BoT is not planning to a issue a public CBDC in the near future, Veerathai said that they are now testing the use of cryptocurrency for settling payment among financial institutions. He was reffering to Project Inthanon, where the BoT and eight commercial banks will collaboratively design and develop a proof-of-concept (PoC) prototype for wholesale funds transfer by issuing a wholesale CBDC.

“The BoT hopes that full implementation of using digital currency among financial institutions would take place during the first quarter of 2019,” Veerathai said.