As per the Bank of Korea, citizens will only be able to use digital won to buy selected goods.
South Korea is gearing up to launch its first pilot of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) with 100,000 citizens in late 2024, the South China Morning Post reports.
The pilot, which is a joint effort of the Bank of Korea, Financial Services Commission and Financial Supervisory Service, will allow selected citizens to buy goods with digital won for three months. However, participants of the pilot won’t be able to use CBDC solely for its designated payment purposes, the report notes. Other payments, including personal remittance, will not be permitted either.
With the pilot, the South Korean authorities want to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of CBDC. To do this, the central bank will collaborate with the Korea Exchange, the country’s sole securities exchange operator, to integrate the CBDC into a simulation system for carbon emissions trading. This will include testing the feasibility of delivery versus payment transactions between carbon emissions rights and the payment tokens.
As crypto.news earlier reported, South Korea is actively seeking a way to replace crypto with its own controlled digital solutions as Koreans are “widely known for their active involvement in crypto trading,” the Bank of Korea said at the time. Furthermore, there exists an active interest and significant investment in the field of blockchain technology from both large scale enterprises and start-ups, the regulator added.
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