Sweden’s Central Bank has completed the second phase of its CBDC pilot and is ready to begin testing the feasibility of using the digital krona to create new payment services.
The Reserve Bank of Sweden (Riksbank) has published a report on the end of the second stage of testing of the CBDC pilot project. The document says that the test of the digital krona in Sweden’s traditional banking system was successful, and developers are ready to start creating payment tools on its basis.
Riksbank analysts report that the new phase will include a study of the possibility of using digital krona in online and offline payments.
The study also said the e-krona could be seen as “an electronic form of cash.” And the second phase of CBDC testing showed that the e-krona could be successfully integrated into the mobile apps of Swedish banks Handelsbanken and Tietoevry, an opportunity to popularize CBDCs among Swedish citizens.
However, Swedish government officials are concerned about the possibility of privacy breaches. The point is that the CBDC pilot version allows transaction tracking, which directly contradicts the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In this regard, the Central Bank intends to continue research and does not deny the possibility of consulting on further integration of the digital krona with European regulators.
At the moment, no final decision has been made on issuing the e-krona. Also, there are no final technical solutions for its functioning, and the legal framework for the use of digital assets of the central bank has not yet been created. However, representatives of the Swedish Central Bank claim that they are working on these issues and have already started researching software solutions to create new payment services, which in the future will be more effective than traditional banking technologies.
