PR92078

NEW DELHI and MUMBAI, India, October 1, 2021 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --

    "About 80-100 Central Banks around the world, including G20 nations, are

exploring the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and are in some sort of

pilot or testing stages," Tobias Adrian, Financial Counsellor and Director

Monetary and Capital Markets Department, International Monetary Fund said at

the Global FinTech Fest. The three-day Fest, which concluded on 30 September,

was attended by over 26,000 delegates from 121 countries. Policymakers,

technocrats, investors, founders, economists, bankers, participated in the

Fest. The event was organised by National Payments Council of India (NPCI

[https://www.npci.org.in/]) and Fintech Convergence Councill (FCC

[https://www.fintechcouncil.in/]) and Payments Council of India

(PCI[http://paymentscouncil.in/about-us.aspx]) of Internet and Mobile

Association of India (IAMAI [https://www.iamai.in/]).

   "CBDCs are designed to be very stable, stable in value, low transaction cost

and backed by the Central Bank for added consumer confidence, very different

from bitcoins which fluctuate in value and are more like an investment asset,"

Tobias Adrian said.

Central Banks around the world are rushing in to think about CBDCs as it is

very appealing for Central Banks to go along with technological progress. Also,

there could be a lot of innovations in Central Banks issued digital currencies,

especially across payments, lending platforms.

   "CBDCs could indeed be somewhat similar, not necessarily be, to bitcoin

assets, could be based on blockchain technology, could be available in wallets.

It depends on the design whether it is based on existing payment systems or

using very powerful blockchain technologies," Tobias Adrian mentioned.

   Meanwhile, he warned that cybersecurity could be a major challenge for

CBDCs. "You need to make sure that the system is resilient against

cyberattacks." It's not the technology alone but the intersection of technology

and human. Secondly, CBDCs might undermine existing banks so banks need to

upgrade their technologies to compete. Finally, cellphones, not all today have

cellphones for transacting CBDCs.

   On expensive cross-border payments, Adrian envisioned that cross-border

transfers would be a lot cheaper for small amount of payments. There are some

wallet exchanges available that allow one to convert US dollar into rupee

stable coin, with an implicit fee that is cheaper. However, there are a lot of

discussions going on between Central Banks of various countries to make the

cross-border payments cheaper.

   Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1629838/GFF_Logo.jpg

   Source:  Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)