The South African Reserve Bank says it has successfully tested its payment system using block chain technology.
The results of the tests are part of Project Khokha which was launched on Tuesday in Johannesburg.
The bank’s Deputy Governor Francois Groepe says block chain payment and settlement system is safe and efficient.
He says independent computers will also be used to process payment as back up measure.
“The bank runs the retail gross settlement system for the country – and we process the transactions of about 150 trillion rand a year, so that’s nearly 30 times GDP… and what we did is a proof of concept to see if we can use the technology to settle in a gross settlement system set up,” Groepe says.
He says they have managed to settle about 70 000 transactions in about 01h30 and 99 percent of those transactions were settled in 2 seconds.
“Let’s assume the central bank main system is down… that causes huge disruptions, people won’t be able to their credit card or do EFT transfer; what the system allows is that even if the central bank is down, the system can operate without disruption,” says Groepe.
Tests conducted on the system showed that Project Khoka was able to process the typical daily transaction volume of South African financial institutions within 2 hours.
