The key question is this: as finance goes digital, how will trust in money be preserved? The Bank for International Settlements says digital innovation is rapidly reshaping payments and financial intermediation, promising faster, cheaper and more competitive services. But it warns that without firm public oversight and a clear role for central bank money as the system’s anchor, these gains could come with new macro-financial risks, from platform outages to unstable private forms of money.
The institution urges policymakers to update rules and infrastructure so innovation works on safe foundations. That includes setting common standards, strengthening oversight of digital platforms, and exploring public options such as a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and modern instant-payment rails. For South Africa—where the South African Reserve Bank is testing a potential central bank digital currency and BankservAfrica’s PayShap is rolling out faster payments—the message is that new technologies should plug into a framework that keeps money universally trusted and interoperable across the system.
For more detail, read the full announcement.