While speaking at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) ‘Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy Development‘ Sunday, Central Bank of Bahrain governor Khalid Humaidan told the ‘Open Forum: The Digital Currencies’ Opportunity in the Middle East‘ panel that the goal of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is to replace cash with digital payments, and that the Covid pandemic was a convenient helper toward that goal.

“I think the transition to fully digital [currency] is not going to be a stretch, people are used to it, people are engaged in it, and circumstances that help is adoption rates increased because of Covid,” Humaidan said.

Humaidan also stated that the general public is not resisting the CBDC.

“This is where contactless [payment] started to become something of a necessity, something of a safety, something of a requirement, and because of that there is very little resistance, trust is already there,” the central banker said.

He also talked about how central banks control the issuance of cash, managing the supply via interest rates, and that the effort is largely controlled by the private sector. The banker stated that it is likely a CBDC will be no different, in the fact that private central banks will still dominate the system.

Most ominously, the man said that he hopes cash will go away completely.

“At some point in time hopefully we’ll be able to be 100 percent digital,” he said. [MORE]