The Bank of Israel has brought together 14 teams from the private sector, public sector, and academia to explore potential use cases for a digital shekel.
The teams, which participated in an initial challenge held earlier this year, include established financial institutions, fintech companies, technology firms, and independent teams. The selected proposals cover a wide range of functions, such as connecting the digital shekel with existing payment systems and cash, utilizing advanced features of the digital shekel like subwallets, conditional payments, and split payments, as well as integrating various technologies to enhance its use as a payment method.
The central bank plans to test the participants’ proposals in a digital sandbox starting in August, with a showcase of the developed products scheduled for a concluding conference at the end of October.
Andrew Abir, deputy governor of the Bank of Israel, emphasized the learning gained from the process so far and expressed confidence in the innovations that will emerge from the proposed use cases. He highlighted the importance of the private sector’s ability to leverage the infrastructure developed by the central bank, making this challenge crucial for fostering innovation in payments.
The teams selected to participate in the Challenge include:
– Bits of Gold
– Brinks Israel Ltd. + Committed Digital Ltd.
– COTI
– Credics Technologies LTD
– Team Energy, led by Viacheslav Pozharskii
– Fireblocks
– Idemia France SAS
– Kima Finance
– Open Finance LTD
– 0xPay
– Paypal Israel LTD
– Qedit
– Shva
– Team Levana, led by Doron Asor