Ghana is reportedly working on developing offline capabilities for their future CBDC, a central bank digital currency. This is in an effort to promote its use in virtually every segment of Ghanaian society.
Offline functionality in Ghana
This is according to a report from Bloomberg. This shows that Wame Oppong, head of fintech and innovation at the Bank of Ghana (BoG), has revealed that the country’s digital currency called ‘e-cedi’ will start supporting offline transactions. Oppong said this during last Monday’s Ghana Economic Forum.
The offline functionality is expected to be highly appreciated in Ghana. This is due to a significant portion of the country not having reliable access to electricity or the internet. from an investigation The World Bank in 2019 found that about 84% of Ghanaians had stable access to electricity, while only 53% had an internet connection. An offline functionality therefore seems a logical step. Oppong said the following:
“The e-cedi could also be used in an offline environment by means of a few smart cards.”
Smartcard and local crypto acceptance
Such a smartcard is in fact a plastic card the size of a credit card. A chip is then used here, with which the user in question can perform transactions with a pre-loaded balance. Previously, Oxfam has trialled a similar system to facilitate payments using the decentralized stablecoin Dai to provide assistance in environmental disasters.
The local adoption of decentralized cryptocurrencies also seems to be increasing. The analytics firm called Chainalysis has since reported that the cryptocurrency market in Africa has grown by more than 1,200% since 2020 from a month earlier. It is currently unknown whether this trend will continue for a long time, or whether it will be short-lived. Still, these are very positive numbers.