South Africa’s 2024 budget review shows the treasury’s strategy to encourage the use of digital payments by analyzing stablecoins and blockchain.
In its 2024 budget review, the nation emphasized implementing structural reforms and enhancing public financial management. The National Treasury, in the course of describing its strategy to promote digital payments, also disclosed an imminent policy shift regarding crypto assets, with stablecoins being the focus.
“In 2024, the Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group will publish additions to include “stablecoins” as a particular type of crypto asset.”
In addition to finalizing a diagnostic of the domestic stablecoin landscape, the working group will amend the crypto regulation paper published in June 2021 to include stablecoins in the crypto asset class. The report was as follows:
“It will conduct analytical work to understand the applicable use cases of stablecoins and to recommend an appropriate policy and regulatory response.”
Furthermore, an amendment to the Financial Intelligence Centre Act might mandate that all establishments disclose cryptocurrency transactions exceeding 49,999 South African rand ($2,650). Additionally, the South African financial sector will investigate the effects of tokenization based on blockchain technology.
It is anticipated that the working group will release a paper delineating “the policy and regulatory implications of tokenization and blockchain-based financial market infrastructure” by December 2024.
In addition, the South African government, in partnership with the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs of Switzerland and FinMark Trust, will oversee four pilot digital payment initiatives over three years.
The four pilot initiatives are community digitalization, digitizing payments for informal and low-income workers, cross-border remittances, and cross-border commerce. Using payment innovation, the initiative seeks to assist small and informal enterprises.
East African farmers benefited from South Africa’s digital disruption strategies, as blockchain technology provided access to global markets for the remote population.
AgTech company Dimitra and One Million Avocados (OMA), a sustainability-focused technology group, announced a partnership on July 20, 2023, to assist Kenyan avocado producers in increasing production and quality via blockchain and other cutting-edge emerging technologies.
