The President of Kyrgyzstan approved amendments to the constitutional law, allowing the launch of a pilot project for the central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital som.
President Sadyr Japarov signed a bill titled “Amendments to the Constitutional Law on the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic,” which grants the digital som the status of a legal tender in the country.
The law, passed by the parliament in early 2025, grants the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic the exclusive right to issue the digital som and establish rules for its circulation. The CBDC will be issued and used through a specialized platform, which serves as the technological and software infrastructure for issuing, accounting for, and distributing the digital currency.
The National Bank is also authorized to:
- develop and approve rules for payment processing for banks and other regulated entities;
- define security standards for ensuring transactions and preventing fraud;
- perform additional functions related to the operation of the digital som platform in accordance with the Kyrgyz Republic’s payment system legislation.
The testing of the CBDC platform is expected to begin in 2025, though a final decision on its full-scale implementation won’t be made before late 2026.
According to CBDC Tracker, only four countries officially launched state-backed digital currencies: The Bahamas (Sand Dollar), Nigeria (eNaira), Zimbabwe (ZiG), and Jamaica (JAM-DEX). More than half of the world’s central banks plan to release CBDCs within the next five years.
