Latin American Country Brazil Looks to Introduce Its CBDC Soon

The Brazilian central bank said the country could release a central bank digital currency by 2022, according to local reports.

A Brazilian CBDC

Brazil is the latest country in a long line to jump on the nationalized digital currency bandwagon. An official for its central bank said this week that its forthcoming PIX system already aims to speed up interbank payments and make them cheaper, and could even pave the path for a bigger project involving a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

The bank’s president Roberto Campos Neto, said the country could fulfill all prerequisites and conditions for eventually launching its central bank digital currency in 2022.

Brazil has only recently begun formally studying the possibility of implementing a CBDC. On August 20, the Central Bank installed a study team to evaluate the idea.

Central banks are looking to introduce their own digital currencies as the crypto market has burgeoned since its inception. The institutionalization of cryptocurrencies, as it is called, can soon take place.

Brazil, which is one of such countries working to better its banking infrastructure and develop a technology capable of processing interbank payments without a time limit, practically free and instantaneously.

Blockchain Project Ready in November 

PIX will be ready in November and will compete against other providers like neobanks and even blockchain startup Ripple. The latter is already establishing itself in the country using its on-demand liquidity service.

Neto commented on the development:

“To have a digital currency, you need an instant payment system that is efficient and interoperable; an open system, where you can create competition; and a currency that has credibility, is convertible and international. This payment system could be the renowned PIX that is about to be launched.”

He added the country now has “all ingredients” to have digital currency. We think we’ll have it by 2022. 

Meanwhile, Campos Neto said he has been talking with parliamentarians about the bill that the BC presented in 2019 to modernize the Brazilian exchange rate system. The project is expected to be voted on in the next two weeks, according to the minister. And that is why he believes that the conditions for issuing digital currency will be established in Brazil as early as 2022.