The Central Bank of Cambodia has recently announced that it plans to diminish the costs of cross-border transfers and payments by using a digital wallet based on a blockchain called Bakong, powered by the Hyperledger technology.
According to reports from local media outlets, the central bank signed an agreement with Maybank, a Malaysia-based banking institution, to determine how the platform would work. The idea is that the two digital payment platforms (Bakong and Maybank2u) can be used to send money to each other paying fewer fees.
This would really solve a major problem in transferring funds from one country to other. The chief of the central bank, H. E. Chea Serey, affirmed that the two countries are very near when only their physical location is taken into account, but that remittance fees can be as high as 30%, which is not acceptable.
After the upcoming change, the system would enable transfers which would be quicker and cheaper both inside the country and to the other nation.
Bakong was launched a few months ago and it has a lot of users as it accepts the clients from eight of the major banks in the country. By connecting to Maybank2u, the reach of the software could be even bigger, as it would tap into a much larger audience outside of the country.
To know how big this audience could be, you should know that 52% of all online banking transactions in the country were done via this app. A partnership between the two companies could effectively connect the two countries financially in a way that was never seen before.
