The ex-governor of the Bank of France Christian Noyer believes that large financial institutions will be able to launch their own central bank digital currencies (CBDC) for a wide range of consumers no earlier than in the next 10 years, the Financial Times reports.
However, Noyer is confident that CBDC operations between banking institutions will start much earlier.
In January, the Bank for International Settlements announced that over 50 central banks over the world are already developing prototypes of CBDCs.
Meanwhile, Sweden and Uruguay have already managed to launch pilot projects of their digital currencies, having tested the e-krona and e-peso currencies, respectively.
Noyer believes the growth of private finance initiatives, such as Facebook's Libra and Telegram's Gram, prompted financial institutions to seriously consider issuing their own digital currencies.
However, Noyer highlights the financial institutions still have doubts on the issue of digital assets due to concerns about confidentiality and the impact on the central bank's ability to pursue the monetary policy.
Last year iHodl reported that the European Central Bank (ECB) developed a proof-of-concept for a CBDC whose aim is to combine privacy and compliance.
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