Sirlibz
Cambodia, a southeast Asian Country with a population of over 15 million individuals according to the 2019 consensus has been working on developing a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for over 5 years now and is set to launch this Year.
The DLT platform is designed to make it easier for Cambodia’s banks, E-wallets providers and banking customers to transact with. The network platform would in a way enhance the country’s payment system and allow users to make really fast or near instant payments using the platform, through a mobile app or QR code.
This is in a bid to weaken the use of the almighty greenback (the U.S dollars) and to encourage citizens to use local currency.
Serey Chea, the Director-General of the National Bank of Cambodia revealed during the Consensus : Distributed that over 90% of Cambodia’s economy is based on the U.S dollar. She further stated that they already have at present 12 participating banks which have been trailing (testing) the platform. All financial institutions in Cambodia are expected to voluntarily join them soon.
Chea also extended on to give reasons why this platform has been worked on.
She clearly explained that there were no good reasons for using dollars instead of the local Cambodian riel, since they do not have a weak macroeconomic.
“In the case of Cambodia, all our fundamentals are strong. We have a very stable exchange rate, very low inflation rate, and a very good economic outlook.” – Chea
Another reason for the development of this platform is the fact that $1 equals 4,115 riel (as at the time of writing). Meaning citizens have to go out with very large amounts of cash in order to spend a good amount, say $20, which will equal 82,300 riel. This sometimes is quite hard for a good number of people.
In order to tackle this, Chea gives insight
“We thought that if we were to make the payment in the electronic form, then people don’t have to be too bothered so much about the number of zeros and the inconvenience of carrying a lot of banknotes in their pocket.” – Chea
Slowly but surely, Crypto is becoming the way.
