Abu Dhabi: In a joint statement, the Central Bank of UAE (CBUAE) and the Saudi Central Bank, announced the results of ''Aber'' Project for digital currency.
In light of the ongoing experiments and research, the two central banks have launched "Aber" Project as an innovative initiative which is considered one of the first of its kind internationally at the level of central banks. This initiative aims to proof of concept for, study, understand, and evaluate the feasibility of issuing a digital currency for central banks .
The Wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), which was fully covered was issued by SAMA and the CBUAE, used only by them, and the banks participating in the initiative, as a settlement unit for domestic as well as cross-border commercial bank transactions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Over the course of a whole year, usage solutions were designed, implemented, and managed. The solutions, results, and main lessons learned were all documented in Project "Aber" Report. With the project outputs, the report aims to significantly enrich knowledge content in this field, in addition to laying the foundations for future work to be explored in the coming years.
The final results of the pilot project were consistent with the results of similar pilots conducted by a number of central banks. These results showed that the distributed ledger technology would enable central banks to develop payment systems at both local and cross-border levels.
It is hoped that the project will work as a foundation for more studies and applications conducted by central banks and relevant international organizations, focusing particularly on various potential effects on monetary policies and the stability of the financial sector as well as the impact of various technical possibilities on organizational structures and the sector in general.
