Russians will be able to pay with digital rubles within two to four years, Olga Skorobogatova, First Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, said in an interview with Forbes.
The regulator sees no need to rush into a full-scale implementation of the national currency’s digital form.
“It is more important that the system is secure and working impeccably,” Olga Skorobogatova emphasized. “We will definitely continue with the digital ruble as a pilot project with a limited number of users and operations through 2023 and 2024,” she added.
In fact, there are no real barriers to the introduction of the digital ruble, Artyom Deyev, head of analytics at AMarkets, says. The experience of bitcoin is quite telling – a fully digital currency is freely circulating, is used for payment and investment.
“Accordingly, all the digital ruble needs are a legal framework and a well-developed circulation infrastructure. Both can be provided over the indicated period until 2027,” the expert is sure. “The pilot system can accommodate 30 medium-sized businesses from 11 cities. I think it is a sufficient sample, statistically, to test the new technology and then scale it further throughout the country.”