Ukraine Announces Timeline for E-Hryvnia Pilot Launch

A pilot project for launching the electronic hryvnia is planned for 2024, according to the Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov in an interview with РБК-Украина.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation has appealed to the National Bank to accelerate the development of the electronic hryvnia.

“By law, the NBU should already launch pilots in 2024, but we want to launch them this year rather than postpone to the next. Therefore there is ongoing communication with the National Bank and the business sector; this will happen irreversibly,” Fedorov said.

The minister added that authorities have already intensified work in this direction with the participation of commercial banks.

“Recently I was shown a Stellar-based electronic hryvnia. They developed the first blockchain transactions, showing how the movement of these funds can be tracked,” he added.

In November 2022, the NBU presented the e-hryvnia concept project to participants in the market for virtual assets and to representatives of banks and financial institutions.

In January 2023, Ukrainian Tascombank published the results of pilot testing of issuing electronic money on the Stellar network.

Thereafter, Mykhailo Fedorov stated his desire to become one of the first users of the e-hryvnia.