Bangkok – The Bank of Thailand (BoT) is to issue its own digital currency for use in domestic wholesale funds transfers.
The currency is expected to be built on an open source blockchain, said BoT Governor Veerathai Santiprabhob, who cited demand for faster transactions across banking networks.
He said, like other central banks, the BoT’s goal is not to immediately bring its digital currency into use but rather to explore its potential and implications for back office operations, hoping that these efforts would pave the way for faster and cheaper transactions and validations due to a process of less intermediation, compared to the current system.
The digital currency will be named Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDD) and is being created on the open source digital ledger platform called Corda which was developed by a banking partner R3.
R3’s Corda platform is designed to increase efficiency for financial firms by removing intermediaries.
Veerathai added the BoT’s efforts are part of a wider program of private and public sector applications currently underway in the country. Fourteen of the country’s banks operating in conjunction with seven leading businesses and state-owned enterprises are expected to introduce a production-ready project to offer blockchain-based letters of guarantee in the second half of the year.
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