The National Bank of Ukraine is preparing for the second experiment on the use of the digital hryvnia (e-hryvnia) by the end of this year. Anyone can take part in it.

Director of the Department of Payment Systems and Innovative Development of the National Bank of Ukraine Andriy Poddyerohin announced this in the “Chronicles of Economy” podcast from “Ukrainian Pravda”.

“We plan to make this pilot project open. Banking and non-banking institutions will be agents of the central bank for distributing money, exchanging it and enabling users to manage it using their mobile applications.” – said the official.

The NBU has already sent invitations to banks to participate in the pilot project. Those of them who give an affirmative answer will invite their clients to participate.

The amount of e-hryvnia issue will be announced at the National Bank after they understand how many banking institutions and their clients really want to participate in testing the e-hryvnia.

The NBU plans to start the second pilot project using the e-hryvnia in the second half of 2024. Roughly, it will last about 6 months.

As part of the experiment, all those willing to test the e-hryvnia will be able to exchange their cash and non-cash money for it.

According to Podderyogin, the purpose of the second experiment on the use of digital money of the central bank in Ukraine is to find out whether there is a demand for this form of money among the population and whether there is a need for its introduction.

As part of the experiment, they plan to test the possibility of paying with digital money offline. In addition, the NBU aims to foresee the technical possibility of programming the e-hryvnia.

We will remind that the NBU conducted the first experiment on the use of e-hryvnia in 2018. It became one of the first central banks in the world to test the use of digital money. Within the framework of the first pilot project, the National Bank issued 5,443 e-hryvnias, which were used only by employees of the regulator.

In total, 208 transactions between e-wallets, 82 transactions of replenishment of these wallets, 42 transactions of exchange of e-hryvnias for non-cash money, 40 transactions of transfers for the needs of fighters who fought in Donbas, and 19 transactions of replenishment of the mobile operator LifeCell’s account were carried out.

In September 2021, the NBU opened the “e-hryvnia” project, the purpose of which was to determine the need for a large-scale issue of a digital form of the hryvnia in Ukraine. A year later, Ukrpatent registered the trademarks “e-hryvnia” and “e-hryvnia”, which belong to the National Bank.

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