Cashless Venezuela? Maduro mulls digital payments amid shortage

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has targeted the public transit system — where roughly three-quarters of all circulating cash is spent — as the first stage of his ‘digital bolivar’ plan.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is pressing banks to implement digital payment systems as hyperinflation prompts chronic shortages of cash in the bolivar currency, three people familiar with the talks told Reuters news agency. Maduro has targeted the public transit system — where roughly three-quarters of all circulating cash is spent — as the first stage of a plan he calls “the digital bolivar”. In January, he asked banks to deliver point-of-sale terminals to the Caracas subway system and bus drivers, people who spoke on the condition of anonymity said. With annual inflation hitting 2,665 percent, long lines form many mornings outside banks in Caracas as residents seek to withdraw a maximum of 400,000 bolivars — the equivalent of 20 United States cents — just to pay round-trip transit fare to get to work.