E-Rupee, Sand Dollar and more: Nine countries that have digital currencies

In today's technology-forward time, everything is digital, so why not currency? Let's take a look at some countries with their own digital currencies

India's Digital Rupee or eINR or the E-Rupee is a tokenised version of the country's currency, the Indian Rupee (INR). It was proposed in 2017 and the nation's central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), launched its pilot project in March 2023.
 

The island nation launched the world's first central bank digital currency called the Sand Dollar in 2020.

In October 2021, Nigeria launched its own central bank digital currency (CBDC) called the eNaira.

China was one of the pioneers in the field of digital currency. The nation started exploring a potential digital currency in 2014 and launched its CBDC pilot in 2020. Its currency is called the digital yuan, or e-CNY.

While the USA is yet to formally launch its e-currency, as per reports, the nation is well on its way to developing a bank-to-bank digital currency.
 

Jamaica's central bank, the Bank of Jamaica (BoJ), legalised its digital currency 'Jam-Dex' in 2022.

In August 2021, the Bank of Ghana partnered with Giesecke+Devrient (G+D), a German company to pilot Africa's first CBDC, 'the Digital Dirham'.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) partnered with international collaborators to launch Ubin+ in November 2022 for cross-border foreign exchange (FX) settlements using wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC).
 

DCash was launched by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank in March 2021, making it the first monetary union to utilise a CBDC.