When central banks all over the world have been working towards exploring CBDCs, The UAE had announced its digital dirham as one of the keys initiatives of its new Financial Infrastructure Transformation Program.
The start of work on the project was announced a while ago, and it seems that the pace of work is faster than expected, since it was decided that the project will be ready for launch within 12 to 15 months, and that the first phase will be ready in mid-2024.
As part of the UAE's digital transformation, CBDC will help address the pain points of domestic and cross-border payments, enhance financial inclusion and the move towards a cashless society. It will further strengthen the UAE's payment infrastructure, providing additional robust payment channels, ensuring a resilient and reliable financial system. More importantly, the CBUAE aims to ensure the readiness of the UAE to integrate the payment infrastructures with the future potential tokenization world, the tokenization of the financial and non-financial activities.
https://www.centralbank.ae/media/lpoilyue/cbuae-launches-the-central-bank-digital-currency-strategy-the-digital-dirham-en.pdfMr.Khaled Mohamed Balama, the Governor of the UAE Central Bank, said: “CBDC is one of the initiatives as part of the (UAE Central Bank) CBUAE’s FIT program, which will further position and solidify the UAE as a leading global financial hub. The launch of our CBDC strategy marks a key step in the evolution of money and payments in the country. CBDC will accelerate our digitalization journey and promote financial inclusion. We look forward to exploring the opportunities that CBDC will bring to the wider economy and society.”