The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has successfully completed a pre-pilot phase in the development of Iran’s CBDC, according to an official statement by CBI’s research arm, the Monetary and Banking Research Institute (MBRI).

Mohammad Reza Mani Yekta, head of the CBI office for supervising payment systems, announced the news at the ninth annual conference on electronic banking and payment systems on Feb. 20. He noted that Iran’s central bank plans to increase the scope of the CBDC pilot in the country’s payment system, but doesn’t want to rush its implementation.

The executive pointed out that the rules governing a potential digital rial will be in line with the rules established for rial banknotes. Mani Yekta also noted that a digital rial is planned to be distributed among individuals and banks, with the CBDC infrastructure recreating some blockchain features.

Iran’s digital rial project, referred to as “crypto rial,” is pegged to the national currency, the Iranian rial, at a 1:1 ratio. The digital currency reportedly runs on a platform known as Borna, which was developed using Hyperledger Fabric, the open-source enterprise blockchain platform established by United States technology giant IBM.

(By HELEN PARTZ)

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