Every week we’ll be bringing you the highlights of Iran’s tech scene in the past week. This week, we covered digital currencies banned by the Central Bank of Iran, U.S. sanctions on ZTE, the end of mobile phone smugglings and Iranian’s cost to be on Telegram.

Iran Bans Digital Currencies in All of Its Financial Institutions

According to ITMEN, the Central Bank of Iran announced yesterday on the 22nd of April to all of country’s banks and financial institutions to not use digital currencies in any way possible. 

The CBI explained this banning by stating that these currencies can be used in money laundering, supporting terrorism and generally for transferring money amongst criminals. Therefore CBI’s supervision sector informed this regulations and firmly warned about using these currencies.

This approach of the CBI to digital currencies is a new one, and whether it’s going to be permanent or not isn’t certain.

Related: Central Bank of Iran Plans to Regulate Virtual Currencies in 2018

ZTE in Trouble for Exporting to Iran

According to Tasnim, the Chinese Tech company, ZTE, was banned by the U.S. government for exporting telecom equipments to Iran and North Korea. As a result, all American tech companies are prohibited from any cooperation with ZTE. 

This Chinese company admitted the exports and gave the Americans their word to punish the responsible employees, however the U.S. government claimed that such a thing did not happen and the employees were actually rewarded.

Since ZTE knows that this sanction could end its life, the company is working to negotiate its way out of it.

Related: ZTE Has Been Granted a Reprieve From the U.S. to Continue Working With Iran

Iranians Pay a Billion Dollars a Year for Telegram

According to Tasnim, a member of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace emphasized that using local messengers instead of Telegram will be a great help to the country’s economy. He mentioned that 11 billion and 394 million Tomans (about 2 million USD) is spent a day by Iranian users in Telegram which will reach about a billion Dollar in a year. Also a cyber space expert mentioned that 30% of country’s international internet traffic goes to Telegram.

He also, emphasizing on local messenger’s safety and new payment features encouraged the migration believing that it would result many job opportunities to be created. 

Related: Infographic: Telegram Usage Statistics in Iran

Registry Scheme for Mobile Phones; A Big Success

The Minister of ICT, Mr. Azari Jahromi, announced in his tweets that thanks to the mobile phone registry scheme which was implemented last year, mobile smuggling has reached close to zero. In his tweet he thanked the people and his colleagues in the matter and hoped for a full execution of the electronic government scheme in the future. 

Related:  Value of Imported Mobile Phones into Iran Reaches 342 Million USD