The upcoming stage of the pilot project is scheduled for 1 April 2023, and it will include the participation of 13 banks. According to Deputy Governor Olga Skorobogatova cited by news.bitcoin.com, the testing phase will begin with transfers between individuals and payments between trade and service companies.
Emphasis was put on the fact that these will be real transactions involving real customers of the participating banks. The banks in question have passed any technical and operational tests required, and they are ready to begin the trials on the agreed-upon date.
However, number of transactions, as well as the number of clients that will take part in the pilot project, will be limited. What’s more, regular customers will not be able to participate at all at this stage.
Russia has announced its digital ruble project in October 2020 and completed a prototype of the CDBC platform in December 2021. In September 2022, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has begun testing the digital ruble platform and has completed a cycle of transfers between individual clients.
As part of the project’s first stage, the bank conducted a series of tests on the issued digital rubles, and three banks from the pilot group have connected to the platform. Out of those three banks, two of them completed a full cycle of digital ruble transfers between clients using banking mobile applications.
Digital wallets were also introduced to the digital ruble platform, and clients were able to exchange non-cash rubles in their accounts for digital ones. Basically, the first stage of the project involved issuing digital currencies, opening digital wallets, and enabling transfers between individual clients.
The second stage of the project focused on testing payments for goods and services at retail and service companies, as well as testing payments for public services and sales of smart contracts. The bank also looked into introducing an offline mode for payments in places without access to the internet, as well as the possibility of conducting transactions with digital rubles for non-resident clients. According to news.bitcoin.com, Russia is stepping up its efforts to release a central bank digital currency due to the ongoing pressure caused by Western sanctions.
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