Following the launch of its pilot Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) earlier this year, the Swedish government said it is exploring the possibility of fully adopting the payment method.
Bloomberg reports that Per Bolund, the country’s financial markets minister said that the review flagged earlier today would be concluded in November 2022.
The ministry has already set up a committee that will oversee the review, with Anna Kinberg Batra, a former chairwoman of the Riksbank’s finance committee chosen to head the group.
Sweden is among the early players globally to consider developing a CBDC. Sweden’s Riksbank, the country’s central bank, announced in February that it had begun testing its CBDC dubbed e-krona.
The trial, which is expected to last for a year, would unravel how the general public can adopt the CBDC in payments, as the bank noted on its website that the process would be “as easy as sending text messages.”
The apex bank had collaborated with consulting firm Accenture to trial e-krona’s usage via an isolated test environment.
Although the project is still running smoothly, the bank said it is yet to decide whether it would issue the CBDC for public use while stating that the decision to launch e-krona officially will be taken at the political level.
It is expected that e-krona will be officially launched when the review is completed because the use of fiats in Sweden has declined significantly, especially during the peak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Before the pandemic’s peak, several Swedish citizens use a mobile payment application called Swish to make payments instead of cash.
This habit led the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) to rate the country as the world’s most cashless society in 2018.
It has been projected that Swedish retailers will stop accepting fiats in payment come 2023.
With such a projection, the Riksbank is not leaving anything to chance. It hopes to officially launch a digital version of the country’s currency that will play a similar role that the physical cash plays today.
