The advantages of the e-hryvnia were outlined by the National Bank of Ukraine

Andriy Poddieriohin stated that one of the advantages of the e-hryvnia could be its use in offline transactions.

The Director of the Payment Systems and Innovations Department of the NBU Andriy Poddieriohin in a blitz interview for the PaySpace Magazine named the advantages and talked about the features of the e-hryvnia, as reported by the National Bank of Ukraine.

Andriy Poddieriohin stated that the key purpose of the e-hryvnia is to efficiently perform all functions of money, complementing both cash and non-cash forms of the hryvnia. Users will have the opportunity to freely choose which form of hryvnia to use for transactions.

“According to the Law of Ukraine ‘On Payment Services,’ digital money of the National Bank (e-hryvnia) is an electronic form of Ukraine’s currency, issued by the National Bank. Thus, e-hryvnia is the currency of Ukraine, which is a legal tender in Ukraine and can exist only in non-cash form.

It is worth emphasizing that the key purpose of e-hryvnia is to efficiently perform all functions of money, complementing both cash and non-cash forms of the hryvnia, rather than replacing existing forms of money. Users will have the opportunity to freely, without any restrictions, choose which form of hryvnia (cash or non-cash, including e-hryvnia) to use for transactions.

The main advantage of e-hryvnia for users, which we highlight, is that it should be a direct obligation of its issuer – the National Bank – to the users. At the same time, e-hryvnia should perform all functions of money, be convenient and accessible for use by citizens, businesses, government agencies, banks, and non-bank payment service providers. Thus, the National Bank will be the sole issuer of e-hryvnia, which will function at the national level.

The wallet (account) of the e-hryvnia user, accessible through a payment service provider, should be maintained in a single registry on a technological solution for which the National Bank will be responsible. At the same time, the National Bank will not own or have access to any personal information of e-hryvnia users.

One of the advantages may be the use of e-hryvnia in offline transactions, which we are also studying in the ‘E-hryvnia’ project. Another important advantage we see is the possibility of programmability of payment operations with e-hryvnia, as DLT technology potentially provides more opportunities for its implementation. In our opinion, the use of a single e-hryvnia platform will simplify the creation of innovative programmable services for users.

In particular, we are considering such options for programmability of operations with e-hryvnia:

• Programming the logic of payment operations embedded in smart contracts, for example, splitting a payment among several payees, making payments after certain conditions are met, for regular automatic payments (e.g., rent payments for property every month), payment for goods and services – only upon their receipt or for a certain type of goods (e.g., for the purchase of books or children’s goods);
• The ability to provide targeted state aid in e-hryvnia, which can only be used for specific purposes and goods,” – said Andriy Poddieriohin.