Taking the cue from several countries across the globe, Ukraine’s central bank has also started the development of a pilot scheme for its own national digital currency called the e-hryvnia.

The head of payment networks and innovative growth department at The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), Aleksandr Yablunivskiy, revealed that the organization has been working on the development of the concept for at least a year, and launched the pilot in December 2018. He said:

“AT THE END OF LAST YEAR WE BEGAN A PRACTICAL PILOT, WHEN THE INSTRUMENT WAS RELEASED FOR NBU EMPLOYEES UNDER CURRENT METHODOLOGY, IN ORDER TO ASSESS ITS PRACTICAL USE ASPECTS AND THE ABILITY OF THE CENTRAL BANK TO REALIZE FUTURE PROJECTS, AS WELL AS GETTING FEEDBACK FROM USERS.”

Ukraine’s economy currently is heavily reliant on cash payments, a proposition the government wants to change as expressed by the previous announcements about e-hryvnia.

NBU also claimed that currently there is a plethora of regulators in the cryptocurrency marketspace and urged Ukrainian lawmakers to create adequate legislation and fix this issue while casting a wider net on the cryptocurrency trade. NBU will now calculate its next move and analyze the results of the pilot, Yablunivskiy added.

“We can even say we’ve gotten ahead of global leaders [in national digital currency], given we’ve taken a step in conducting practical research, albeit a small step,” he commented.

He was also keen to specify that e-hryvnia is not a new cryptocurrency: “We are not talking about cryptocurrency; we are talking about a central bank digital currency. It can be implemented with both the technology of a centralized registry and a decentralized one.”

Last month, the NBU revealed development plans for a digital version of its currency which was not based on blockchain tech.