todaysgazette.com
Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) and the UAE are working indoor to finally bring their jointly designed cryptocurrency to the world, Today’s Gazette has learnt.
The two allies say it is finalizing the pilot operations of the digital currency Aber designed for cross-border remittance, which they both unveiled early this year.
A report by Al-Eqtisadiah quoted SAMA’s Deputy Governor for Banking Operations, Hisham Al-Hogail, on the finalization of the pilot operations, which will possibly be centered on the technical aspects.
However, the economic and legal operations are to be looked into during the latter period.
According to Al-Hogail, SAMA is working on expanding the digital currency to other countries to facilitate the transnational remittance. The Deputy Governor did not state the countries it intends extending to in the nearest future.
The two countries’ central banks are making use of Blockchain and Distributed Legders technologies to achieve a proof-of-concept digital currencies for low fees cross-border remittance.
In January when Saudi and UAE launched a trial version of their digital currency dubbed Aber, it used the test version to confirm how cheap the cross-border remittance could be with the cryptocurrency. At that time, the two countries limited the test version to few banks.
Scam Alert
As the two countries prepare to launch their jointly managed digital currency, Saudi’s Finance Ministry had recently warned citizens of Saudi to be careful while trading using cryptocurrency within the country.
The ministry importantly warned against imposters using the image of the country to promote fraudulent cryptocurrency assets to unsuspecting citizens, saying it has no relationship with them.
The ministry mentioned CryptoRiyal and SmartRiyal to be properties of a Singapore-based firm.
The crypto firm was alleged of claiming to be using proceeds from the digital currency to finance Saudi’s smart city NEOM, a new tourism project by the country.
Save for Aber, which the country is involved in, Saudi does not have any relationship with any cryptocurrency firm as at now.
Do not forget that Saudi banks makes use of RippleNet, however, the country is not using XRP for cross-border remittance as far as we know.