The Saudi Central Bank has hired former Managing Director at Accenture, Mohsen AlZahrani, to lead the bank’s crypto and CBDC efforts, Bloomberg reported.
According to Bloomberg’s several sources, Riyadh is taking a new interest in digital assets and communicating with the biggest companies in the space, looking at UAE’s position toward crypto.
One of the countries’ joint digital asset efforts is a CBDC initiative called Aber.
Announced in 2019, Aber is a “joint digital currency and distributed ledger” project, a dual-issued central bank digital currency pilot. Two central banks – the Central Bank of United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) and Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) – and six commercial banks were involved in the development of the project.