CBDC in Cambodia
The Cambodian Central Bank needed to enhance the use of its national currency, the Riel, and contribute to build a better trust in local banks. In deed, Cambodia was one of those countries where people did not place their money in banks yet.
What we did was to push for a game-changing strategy, stepping directly to the most recent technologies. This technology leap revealed to be tricky, as, at the time, only Bitcoin's Blockchain was really functional : Ethereum's Market Cap was still low. To help the institution adopt the disruptive technology, a POC was created.
The Proof of Concept revealed that use cases involving high-frequency & low-amounts was not compatible with Bitcoin technology. Ethereum technology was a better fit from the scalability perspective, however both lacked a critical requirement : Privacy could not be achieved as it should. Several iterations were done, until finally, some permissionned Blockchain technologies started to emerge.
After the success of this POC and general design of the app & payment process, it was continued locally from 2017 to 2019 involving local companies. Hyperledger Iroha was selected, for its ability to handle what looked like a useful "identity layer". Also, the look'n' feel was reviewed to better stick to retail use cases.