The COVID-19 pandemic pushes for cash to go to “normal Fintech,” in particular, the development of digital currencies of central banks, Economist and Professor at the Institute of Sciences Po Sergei Guriev has said. “The future is in the digital currencies of central banks. Central banks will gradually move away from cash, you will have Fintech in hryvnias… Everyone will have an account with the central bank,” he said during a public interview organized by the Kyiv School of Economics.
Guriev added that this trend is a challenge for commercial banks.
“You will have an electronic hryvnia. You will no longer have the cash hryvnia,” he said.
Previously, central banks argued that cash should be avoided by the need to combat the shadow economy, but in the current conditions, the pandemic pushes to it.
“Now it’s clear that this pandemic is not the last. And cash is a source of infection. Therefore, the transition to digital payments will accelerate. But it will not be bitcoin, it will be a normal Fintech,” the economist said.
