It's interesting to see all the banks in the world preparing for CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) during the famous war.

I don't know a lot about CBDC in other countries, but since I live in Russia, I would like to write about the digital rouble that they are almost ready to launch. All the information I will share is from the central bank. You can check that through this link : https://www.cbr.ru/eng/analytics/d_ok/dig_ruble/

So, here they say that it's advanced payment method. While we already have a very fast and immediate way to transfer money between banks. It's called ''fast payment system''. It's possible to do that between all the Russian banks and I use it with my wife a lot. Because it's instant and free. So, I can send rouble to someone many times without paying anything and that will be instant. A lot of people use this method to pay in private stores, market for vegetables and fruits and clothes, even transportation including buses and taxi. I don't see any need in creating another kind of rouble. The one we have is already good to use for the moment. I don't know with all this sanctions what will happen to it, but it seems now stable depending on the prices I see in the store. They changed, but not that much. Maybe we are buying now from what was stocked, let's see what will happen in the future.

I still don't get it, how the digital rouble will improve the national payment system. We have so many people who don't even use smartphones. For example older ones, who only get their money from the pension, and usually they keep their money in cash. It will be especially hard for them to move to digital money. It's interesting what kind of protection they will have. Keys, just like we do in crypto, or maybe that will be with biological data, like the detection of face, fingerprint, or retinal scan. Maybe even those QR codes will be used and only vaccinated ones will be able to use that money. I don't really know.

The interesting thing that it seems they are saying that we will have combined characteristics with cash and non-cash rouble. Is that mean that we will have a digital rouble on paper as well ? Or maybe I don't understand that very well. Otherwise, if it will have cash characteristics, while we are in deed of it at all.

But it seems that they are not going to eliminate the money we already have. We can be happy about that. So, the digital one will not be mandatory. But who knows. They can change their mind anytime. And when there will be enough adopters, they can say that they don't need the recent money at all, and all the country will move to the digital one.

It seems that they are already launching tests on it with consumers and even banks. You can read about that here : Digital ruble: start of testing.

Again, while everyone is busy discussing the war, other countries are also busy creating and implementing digital money everywhere.

An interesting time we are all living in.

There will be more to come.