Georgia Intends to Launch a Limited CBDC Pilot Project
The National Bank of Georgia has announced plans to launch a pilot project for a digital lari, which will include nine companies such as Ripple Labs.
One of these companies will have the opportunity to continue participating in the next stage of testing.
The list of companies involved in the project includes Augentic, Bitt, Broxus Holdings, Currency Network, DCM, eCurrency Mint, FARI Solutions, and Sovereign Wallet.
The goal of the project is for Georgia to join the EU, with the digital lari expected to be interoperable with the digital euro while still maintaining monetary freedom.
The new form of money will likely have a two-tier design, with wallets provided by a third party and the ability to be programmable and support asset tokenization.
Potential use cases for the digital lari include providing insurance to companies in the agricultural sector and automating real estate transactions.
In September, the National Bank of Georgia joined the mBridge project as an observer, which is a platform for cross-border payments involving CBDC.
This announcement builds upon the central bank’s plans to issue a digital lari, which were first announced in May 2021.
