Bank of International Settlement

Rio is a prototype of a central bank-specific, real-time capable market monitoring platform. The cloud-based stream processing platform will process real-time financial data feeds and compute relevant liquidity and market risk measures.

Project Helvetia, undertaken with the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and the financial infrastructure operator SIX, demonstrates the functional feasibility and legal robustness of settling tokenised assets with a wholesale CBDC (proof of concept 1) and through linking a digital ledger technology platform to existing payment systems (proof of concept 2) in a near-live setup. Rio is a prototype of a central bank-specific, real-time capable market monitoring platform. The cloud-based stream...

Technologically enabled financial innovation is spurring new business models, applications, processes, and products with an associated material effect on financial markets and institutions and the provision of financial services. Customer preferences, particularly amongst millennials and "digital natives" regarding convenience, speed and cost of financial services are driving the demand for a seamless and user-friendly interface. Business opportunities have opened for new entrants...

Central banks are innovating and adopting state-of-the-art technologies to transform their capabilities. This session will provide insights from central bank technologists working at the frontier of this innovation, who will describe and discuss their work using the latest data, analytics, AI and cloud technologies.

Around the world, the pandemic has accelerated the shift to digital payments. Cash and cards are being replaced by mobile payment apps, QR codes and e-wallets. These profound changes in consumer behaviour will be long lived and continue to transform the payments landscape for years to come. In this session, we will hear from world leading payments system operators, digital banks, and fintechs on how they have prepared for this digital transformation and what it will take to compete in the...

The last 12 months have seen the launch of the first general purpose central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This panel looks at the drivers for supply and demand for CBDCs and discusses the roles central banks and the private sector may have in developing and distributing such currencies. Central banks that have issued or are closely investigating issuing retail CBDC will outline the thinking behind their policy and technology choices.

Governor Campos Neto from the Banco Central do Brasil and Governor Diaz de Leon from the Banco de México discuss how central banks in the region can innovate in the digital age.

Technology firms and the innovation they are driving have the potential to add huge amounts of value to the emerging digital economy. However, many of these new approaches challenge the norms of our current monetary and financial systems, and the regulatory systems designed to keep them serving the public interest. Data and increasingly powerful analytical and AI capabilities are of particular relevance to this dynamic. Whilst the economic potential of organising and extracting value from...

Decentralised finance (DeFi) applications offer financial services using decentralised technology, such as blockchain. They aim to replace centralised financial infrastructures and intermediaries by shifting those services directly to individuals and investors. DeFi already enables users to access a vast range of financial services, where direct peer-to-peer transactions are governed by smart contracts. DeFi is increasingly providing individuals with an alternative to traditional financial...

The G20 has made enhancing cross-border payments a priority. At the same time, the payments landscape is in flux: retail fast payment systems are being established, central banks are revisiting access to real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems for fintech players, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are moving beyond experiments and prototypes, and standardisation is gaining ground with ISO20022. This panel session looks at the potential of wholesale CBDCs in particular to make...