The Bank of Russia will start testing the digital ruble with the involvement of real money and clients in April 2023 instead of 2024. At the end of 2022, specialists will send regulatory documents to the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets in order to launch the second stage of pilot testing of the new digital currency next year.

According to the new plan for introduction of the digital ruble, transactions between individuals will be tested until the fourth quarter of 2022. Payments for goods and services made by individuals will start to be tested in the fourth quarter. From April 2023, the Central Bank plans to launch a pilot project to test the use of smart contracts. Specialists believe that the digital ruble can help facilitate their implementation.

The Central Bank plans to develop protocols for the interoperability of the digital ruble with the national digital currencies of other countries, in particular, the currencies of the EAEU and the CIS, in the second quarter of 2023. Experts of the Bank of Russia say that this will allow to make cross-border payments and open a second communication channel between banks, in addition to the Central Bank’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages, and will also make it possible not to use SWIFT in such operations.

The Central Bank will become the operator of the separate platform for the digital ruble. The regulatory authority plans to issue the digital ruble using the platform, and open wallets for customers (each customer will have two wallets - one for online and one for offline settlements) and banks.

In October 2020, it was announced that the Bank of Russia was discussing the possibility of issuing the digital ruble and assessing its prospects. The testing of the digital ruble platform started in February 2022.

Original in Russian