Nepal Cautiously Explores CBDC

Step by step, Nepal is looking into issuing its own central bank digital currency (CBDC), a report from Beincrypto said Monday (Aug. 8), quoting a local news story.

Nepal Rastra Bank, the central bank, wants to revise the legislation governing what it can do, which would allow it to look into a CBDC.

The Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) Act 2002, only allows paper notes and coins, not digital currency.

According to Revati Nepal, a senior executive with the bank, there’s been a task force created to craft legislation to allow the central bank to issue CBDC.

“After internal discussions, we will send the bill to the government to table it in Parliament,” said Revati.

But there were already plans underway even before the task force was made, with Revati leading a team to look at the feasibility of making a CBDC. The team reported that it was “viable” but that there would be economic considerations before one would be put in place.

Revati said the NRB might end up using a separate digital wallet for digital banking transactions to be carried out, and would look at working with payment providers on interoperability.

In other CBDC-related news, the Bank of Thailand is moving onto a pilot phase for its own CBDC, but it doesn’t currently have plans to actually issue a coin.

Read more: Thailand Moves CBDC Study to Pilot Stage Without Plans for Issuance

“In addition to previous Wholesale CBDC projects and Proof-of-Concept Retail CBDC testing with corporates, the BOT deems it necessary to extend the scope of Retail CBDC development to a Pilot phase in which real-life application of Retail CBDC will be conducted in cooperation with the private sector within a limited scale,” the BOT said in a press release on Friday (Aug. 5).

The pilot phase is reportedly looking into how a CBDC would work in the retail private sector. The goal is to help the bank develop policies around the risks and benefits for a plan.

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