After 3000 thousand years of money control, some central banks began studying the idea of launching digital currencies, which would constitute a major shift in the movement of markets and the economy in general worldwide.
Sky News reported that the European Central launched a test process to issue a “digital euro”, the results of which will appear by the middle of next year, while the Swedish central bank continues to test the digital krona and will take a decision on it by next February.
A few days ago, a group of seven central banks led by the US Federal Reserve (the central bank) issued a general framework explaining the characteristics that should be characterized by digital currencies.
The Chinese central bank was a pioneer in this field, as it started testing the digital yuan in several Chinese cities early this year, and in recent days it began issuing 10 million digital yuan randomly to test the digital payment system in yuan, and according to some experts, the success of the digital yuan experiment It may support Beijing’s efforts to reduce its dependence on the US dollar.
The trend of central banks towards digital currencies can be explained in two directions: The first is in line with the era of technology and the consumers’ need for a digital payment system that integrates with their digital lives.
And this matter began to be evident in the growth of electronic payments, in China, for example, most smartphone users resort to telephone payment systems.
And in Sweden; It is the country with the least use of cash (cash) in the world. The volume of cash does not exceed 1% of GDP, while Britain has exceeded the volume of payments via payment cards using cash for the first time, during the past year.
The emergence of the Corona virus accelerated this process, with people moving to reduce the use of cash for fear of picking up the virus and the significant growth in the volume of e-commerce, which in April only jumped by more than 209%.
PayPal added more than 7.4 million users during the same month, and more than 13 million people in Latin America during the first quarter used their credit cards for online shopping for the first time.
The other reason for adopting digital currencies is that central banks may seek through this step to pull the rug from under the feet of cryptocurrencies that differ from digital currencies in being decentralized currencies that support anonymous transfers without the need for a middleman or central bank, which eliminates a large part of the role Central banks and financial agencies.
Also, Facebook’s plan to launch its cryptocurrency, “Libra”, prompted central banks to think about digital currencies, after what happened was a message to them that: If they do not think of creating a digital currency, another party will do so. With more than 2.7 billion Facebook users, it was worth thinking about.
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