Project Bang Khun Phrom

The Project Bang Khun Phrom is a pilot phase of the use of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) to assess the effectiveness and safety of a CBDC without affecting the overall financial stability of the Thailand financial system, starting from 2022 to the third quarter of 2023.

CBDC is a digital currency issued by a central bank which has the ability to act as a medium to pay for goods and services, can maintain value ,and is an accounting unit of measurement. For the Project Bang Khun Phrom, it will be a test of the Retail CBDC which means a limited public use digital currency that will allow people who participate in the test to be able to use the Retail CBDC to pay for participating products and services.

The BOT has a mission to develop and upgrade the country's payment system, which the BOT sees the benefits of CBDCs that have the potential to develop financial infrastructure by upgrading payments to be efficient, fast, and accessible convenient including opportunities to support programmability on the CBDC which will help financial service providers to develop innovations and connect with other service providers quickly, at low cost, which will help create new financial services that meet the needs of both the public and the business sector. and government agencies better.

 

In addition, the study of CBDC is in line with the direction of central banks around the world, where the BOT leads the world stage in this regard, being the first country in the world to develop CBDC studies and has already tested the use of CBDC (Pilot Phase).

 

However, the test in the Project Bang Khun Phrom is a basic payment test for payment of goods and services participating in the project only to test the effectiveness of the CBDC, which the BOT will conduct innovative CBDC tests in the next phase.

1. Limited to 3 selected private sector service providers: Bank of Ayudhya Public Company Limited, Siam Commercial Bank Public Company Limited and 2C2P (Thailand) Company Limited.

2. Limited test participants: about 10,000 users, determined by the BOT and 3 private sectors participating in the test.
**There are no plans to accept additional participants**

3. Limited test period: the end of 2022 until the third quarter of 2023.

4. Limited participating stores: in specific areas designated by the BOT and 3 private sectors participating in the testing only.

The project is being tested in line with plans that the BOT has previously released a report on the development of a central bank-issued digital currency.

Be cautious if anyone comes across any solicitation to use or invest in Retail CBDC. It is a scam that can take many forms such as

1) Deceive to participate in selection as a candidate or help access to CBDC, which is not true. As the experimental group is already done. Therefore, there are no additional applications and no referrals, or sell the right to participate in any test.

2) Deceive to hold CBDC to invest or earn interest. This is not true because CBDCs do not pay interest, and not considered an investment.

3) Deceive that CBDC will have gain value, like a coin such as Cryptocurrency. This is not true because CBDCs have a fixed value in baht.

4) Deceive to join a CBDC to receive benefits from government projects. This is not true because this project is organized by the BOT to test the use of CBDC only.

• BOT Call Center : (+66) 0 2 283 5353 or 1213

• Email: rCBDCpilot@bot.or.th