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The Evolution and Future of Money in Canada (Benjamin Geva)

The University of Toronto Press published a book by lawyer and law professor Benjamin Geva on the evolution of money from barter to coins, banknotes, scriptural money, electronic money, and digital currencies. Of course, this has all been covered elsewhere, but what makes this book unique, is the deep, yet very readable, focus on legal aspects, particularly from the perspective of the Canadian monetary regime. The latter includes a thorough history going back to New France's use of agricultural commodities and playing cards as money, to Bank of Canada explorations of both retail and wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The book also extensively covers the legal aspects of virtual currencies, particularly stablecoins, and digital bearer instruments (DBIs). Interestingly, Geva makes a case for DBIs as the optimal Canadian retail CBDC as a path of least resistance through the Bank of Canada and Currency Acts, plus several architectural, economic, and privacy advantages over account-based platforms. He also singles out synthetic CBDCs as an optimal solution for achieving uniformity of money in a framework allowing competition. The book ends by addressing the challenges faced by the current monetary system as the digital age continues to evolve and become more decentralized. [University of Toronto Press]

#History #Money #Canada #Fintech #CBDC #Cash #Payments #Offline #DFC #PaymentSystems #wCBDC

·utppublishing.com·May 17, 2026

The Evolution and Future of Money in Canada (Benjamin Geva)

A Modified Gresham's Law of Stablecoins (Cecchetti and Schoenholtz)

Stephen Cecchetti and Kermit Schoenholtz argue that a modified Gresham’s Law in stablecoins implies that regulation targeting issuers and intermediaries, rather than the tokens themselves, will systematically favor pseudonymous, weakly supervised instruments. They emphasize that Bank Secrecy Act–style rules and recent legislative proposals continue to rely on know‑your‑customer at entry and exit points, leaving cross‑border, self‑custodied dollar tokens largely outside effective control and limiting the impact of wallet blacklisting and analytics. This matters because as long as tokens function as bearer‑like digital cash, criminals can arbitrage differences in national enforcement, making stricter regulation of compliant issuers perversely strengthen “bad” offshore rivals. The authors therefore highlight the need for “compliance‑by‑design” instrument architectures and potentially new legal categories that embed screening and traceability into the token layer itself while preserving some privacy, raising unresolved questions about feasibility, governance, and the required degree of international regulatory coordination. [Cecchetti and Schoenholtz]

#Fintech #Regulation #Stablecoins #UnitedStates #USDC #USDT #DFC #FinancialIntegrity #AMLCFT

·moneyandbanking.com·May 17, 2026

A Modified Gresham's Law of Stablecoins (Cecchetti and Schoenholtz)

28th Meeting of the Digital Euro Scheme Rulebook Development Group (ECB)

The European Central Bank (ECB) posted the outcome of the 28th Digital Euro Rulebook Development Group meeting (10 March 2026) reviewed work on ecosystem fit, the digital euro app, user journeys and minimum user-experience requirements, and additional clarifications on offline functionality, including thresholds, recovery and terminal readiness. It discussed risk management (including financial crime, privacy, reputational and multi-account risks), reuse of PCI and other security standards, and updates to front- and back-end implementation specifications, including alignment with ISO 20022 and Berlin Group structures and separation of authorisation and settlement. The group launched a new terminal/ATM workstream (G5), considered rulebook v0.9 consultation updates, and addressed scheme-wide timeouts and potential deep-dive sessions. [ECB]

#CBDC #ECB #Fintech #Eurozone #DFC #Offline

·ecb.europa.eu·May 16, 2026

28th Meeting of the Digital Euro Scheme Rulebook Development Group (ECB)

27th Meeting of the Digital Euro Scheme Rulebook Development Group (ECB)

The European Central Bank (ECB) posted the outcome of the 27th Digital Euro Scheme Rulebook Development Group meeting (27 January 2026). It was agreed to launch two new workstreams on terminal/ATM providers and on the certification and approval framework, reviewed the ECB’s proposed offline digital euro solution, and discussed risk management including use of a digital euro fraud risk score and alignment with the Payment Services Regulation. The group noted progress on cooperation with standardisation bodies (Nexo, ECPC, Berlin Group, EPC), handling of comments on rulebook v0.9, preparation of a limited digital euro pilot with selected payment service providers and merchants, and forthcoming batches of minimum user experience requirements and implementation specifications. [ECB]

#CBDC #ECB #Eurozone #Fintech #Offline #DFC

·ecb.europa.eu·May 16, 2026

27th Meeting of the Digital Euro Scheme Rulebook Development Group (ECB)

2026 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (FRB)

The U.S. Federal Reserve Board (FRB) 2026 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice finds U.S. consumer payment patterns broadly stable over the past three years, with cash remaining the third most used instrument after debit and credit cards, which together account for about two-thirds of payments. Consumers average 47 payments per month (16 credit, 15 debit, 6 cash), and 76% carry cash daily while 45% hold additional “store-of-value” cash, underscoring its backup and savings role. Cash use is higher among lower-income, older, and rural consumers, and four in five adults used cash in the past 30 days, with 90% intending to keep using it. [FRB]

#Cash #Payments #UnitedStates #FRB #Fintech #DFC

·frbservices.org·May 14, 2026

2026 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (FRB)

Stablecoins vs. Tokenized Deposits: The Narrow Banking Debate Revisited (FRBNY)

[February 2026] The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) published a paper by X. Huang and T. Keister that uses a new monetarist general equilibrium model to examine how stablecoins backed by safe assets versus tokenized bank deposits affects interest rates, investment, and welfare. Deposit insurance creates a risk-shifting incentive for banks, corrected by a regulatory tax on deposit issuance. Stablecoin issuers, being competitive and narrow-balance-sheet, face no such tax and earn zero profit in equilibrium. When stablecoins compete, they bid deposit rates upward toward the safe asset return, raising banks' funding costs and crowding out lower-return risky lending; when prohibited, deposit rates fall and banks expand credit but may over-invest in risky projects. The paper shows that allowing only tokenized deposits raises welfare when regulatory costs are high and moral hazard is limited, whereas allowing only stablecoins is preferable when moral hazard is severe and regulation insufficient, and competition between the two is optimal in intermediate cases — a result the authors connect explicitly to historical narrow banking debates. [FRBNY]

#Regulation #Stablecoins #UnitedStates #FinancialStability #DepositTokens #DFC #Fintech

·newyorkfed.org·May 14, 2026

Stablecoins vs. Tokenized Deposits: The Narrow Banking Debate Revisited (FRBNY)

DTCC Targets Full Launch of Tokenization Service by October (Blockstories)

DTCC will begin live production trades for its tokenization service in July 2026 with a 50‑plus firm working group, targeting full launch by October. Using the ComposerX platform, DTCC will issue onchain “tokenized entitlements” that mirror economic rights in securities held in traditional custody, extending its central securities depository role rather than tokenizing the underlying instruments. Tokens, initially on Canton Network, will be multi‑chain via a mint‑and‑burn model, with no bridges and a single CUSIP-based record to preserve netting and liquidity. DTCC is deliberately avoiding full atomic settlement, arguing current 98% netting efficiency makes immediate migration uneconomic, and is also preparing a Collateral AppChain for 24/7 tokenized collateral management by Q4 2026. https://www.dtcc.com/news/2026/may/04/dtcc-advances-development-of-new-tokenization-service [Blockstories]

#DTCC #Tokenization #Fintech #Settlement #Collateral #Canton #Blockchain #DLT

·blockstories.io·May 14, 2026

DTCC Targets Full Launch of Tokenization Service by October (Blockstories)

Digital Shekel Project: Progress Report 2025 (Bank of Israel)

The Bank of Israel published an update on its digital shekel project that is progressing toward an end‑2026 issuance decision, concluding that expected macroeconomic benefits are likely to exceed the associated costs. The analysis found that disintermediation risk is low under appropriately calibrated holding limits, with policy rate cuts and liquidity injections (via short‑term Bank of Israel bill redemptions) sufficient to offset deposit outflows except under extreme scenarios. A decentralized supervisory model is proposed, with existing financial regulators overseeing their respective digital shekel participants under a uniform Bank of Israel rulebook. A unified multipurpose infrastructure for retail and wholesale use is found technologically feasible and preferable to separate systems. Open questions include whether the digital shekel should be remunerated, offline payment double‑spend prevention, and retail‑versus‑wholesale sequencing. In addition, a quantitative survey of small businesses found that only one‑fifth expressed interest in using digital shekels, citing satisfaction with existing digital payment methods, although they indicated general interest in a digital shekel if it were to offer lower fees than current digital payment methods. A qualitative survey of large corporations also found lukewarm interest in using a digital shekel, with respondents mainly viewing it as potentially relevant for internal settlement and treasury operations rather than for customer‑facing retail payments, and stressing the importance of compatibility with existing systems. [Bank of Israel]

#CBDC #Fintech #Israel #DFC #wCBDC

·boi.org.il·May 13, 2026

Digital Shekel Project: Progress Report 2025 (Bank of Israel)

eCurrency Launches ISO 20022 Compliant CBDC-to-RTGS Implementation (PR Newswire)

eCurrency has productized an ISO 20022‑compliant interface between its central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform and a real‑time gross settlement (RTGS) system, now live at the Bank of Jamaica, enabling real‑time CBDC issuance, settlement, and lifecycle management over standard RTGS messaging rails. The implementation embeds the eCurrency retail CBDC platform as a participant in a Montran‑type RTGS environment, using ISO 20022 messages as the interface layer for issuance, redemption, and high‑value CBDC funding movements. In structural terms, the RTGS system continues to operate as the central bank’s settlement asset ledger and queue manager, while the CBDC platform manages retail‑level token creation, destruction, and lifecycle. RTGS accounts are debited or credited in real time when CBDC is issued to, or redeemed from, intermediaries, with those events triggered and synchronized via ISO 20022 messages rather than proprietary APIs. [PR Newswire]

#CBDC #eCurrency #RTGS #Jamaica #DFC

·prnewswire.com·May 13, 2026

eCurrency Launches ISO 20022 Compliant CBDC-to-RTGS Implementation (PR Newswire)

BOE DLT Innovation Challenge 2025: Final Report (BOE)

The Bank of England (BOE) reported on explorations, carried out in September–October 2025 with nine firms, to see if wholesale central bank money can be transacted and settled on an external programmable ledger not controlled by the central bank. It concluded that DLT can technically speed wholesale settlement and improve throughput but only by accepting material trade‑offs in finality, governance, and resilience. Designs that deliver faster, more “deterministic” settlement tend to shift risk and trust assumptions, weakening decentralization or operational robustness relative to established real‑time gross settlement systems. Scalability enhancements add architectural complexity and create new dependencies that interact negatively with control and resilience requirements. Interoperability solutions with other DLT and legacy systems rarely eliminate trust or operational dependencies; instead they reallocate them across networks or third parties, including off‑chain components for permissionless ledgers. Overall, the trials suggest no dominant DLT architecture for wholesale settlement and frame the policy problem as one of choosing which trade‑offs in speed, control, and governance are acceptable. Further targeted DLT experiments are planned for 2026. [BOE]

#Fintech #Settlement #SettlementSystems #DLT #UnitedKingdom #DFC #CBDC #wCBDC

·bankofengland.co.uk·May 13, 2026

BOE DLT Innovation Challenge 2025: Final Report (BOE)

DTCC adopts Chainlink as official data infrastructure for Collateral AppChain (Finextra)

DTCC will use Chainlink’s Runtime Environment and data standard as the data and orchestration layer for its Collateral AppChain, a shared distributed-ledger platform for collateral management. The integration is intended to link asset prices, valuations and collateral movements and to automate eligibility, valuation, margining, optimization and settlement workflows across participants, with go-live targeted for Q4 2026. [Finextra]

#Blockchain #DTCC #Fintech #Collateral #DLT #Settlement #Chainlink

·finextra.com·May 13, 2026

DTCC adopts Chainlink as official data infrastructure for Collateral AppChain (Finextra)

The GENIUS Act's "Interest" Prohibition: Evidence of Regulatory Arbitrage in Digital Asset Markets (SSRN)

[January 2026] Marquette University's David Krause argues that the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act’s prohibition on “interest or yield” has been functionally nullified by intermediated distribution of USDC rewards via Coinbase. The paper shows that Coinbase USDC “rewards” track 3‑month Treasury bill yields with 98.7% correlation and about 95.6% pass‑through, leaving a stable roughly 20–25 basis point intermediation spread, and that enactment of the Act in July 2025 produces no statistically significant structural break in this relationship. This implies that prohibition‑only drafting around “interest” and “holders” is easily arbitraged by routing reserve income through exchange “distribution fees,” leaving the economic substance of a yield‑bearing instrument intact and re‑raising Howey and Reves securities classification risks for yield‑enhanced stablecoins. Krause proposes instead principles‑based reforms such as safe‑harbor yield bands, mandatory reserve‑income disclosure, and marketing limits, while highlighting unresolved questions on cross‑platform behavior, contract terms between issuers and exchanges, and robustness across interest‑rate cycles. [SSRN] See also: https://www.promarket.org/2026/03/11/regulatory-attempts-to-ban-stablecoin-yields-cannot-compete-with-economics/

#CryptoAssets #Regulation #Stablecoins #UnitedStates #USDC #DFC

·papers.ssrn.com·May 12, 2026

The GENIUS Act's "Interest" Prohibition: Evidence of Regulatory Arbitrage in Digital Asset Markets (SSRN)

Flight to Safety Evaluating Stablecoin’s Role as a Safe-Haven Asset in DeFi Markets (Philadelphia Fed)

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia published research that used on-chain wallet data, event studies, and nonlinear volatility models to assess whether Tether (USDT) functions as a flight-to-safety asset for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) holders during stress periods over 2020–2024. USDT serves as a retail-driven liquidity channel on Ethereum—small wallet holders display consistent defensive reallocation, particularly following the China crypto ban, FTX collapse, and SVB failure—whereas its role on the Bitcoin network is more muted and transactional; Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) shows stronger flight evidence than native BTC, confirming that USDT's function is network-dependent. Large wallet holders on Ethereum exhibit profit-maximizing rather than safety-seeking behavior, and results are sensitive to the volatility measure and model specification used. Hence, treating USDT as a uniform instrument for oversight is systematically miscalibrated—chain-specific and investor-type-specific regulation is warranted, with direct implications for the GENIUS Act and MiCA's redemption-at-par requirement. [Philadelphia Fed]

#CryptoAssets #FinancialStability #Stablecoins #Tether #Bitcoin #DeFi #Ethereum #Regulation #DFC

·philadelphiafed.org·May 12, 2026

Flight to Safety Evaluating Stablecoin’s Role as a Safe-Haven Asset in DeFi Markets (Philadelphia Fed)

CBDC From Global Challenges to Implementation in Kazakhstan (NPCK)

The National Payment Corporation of Kazakhstan (NPCK) published a survey of global central bank digital currency (CBDC) implementation experience to frame Kazakhstan's Digital Tenge rollout, arguing that a phased, programmability-first approach centered on government-to-business use cases can overcome five identified adoption barriers: low public awareness, high bank integration costs, uncertain banking-sector benefits, distributed ledger technology scalability limits, and competition from established payment instruments. For institutional design, the report advocates a two-tier model (central bank issues, commercial banks and fintechs distribute), holding limits and a reverse-waterfall mechanism to contain deposit outflow risk, and non-DLT distributed databases for high-volume retail transactions. The Kazakhstan-specific case emphasizes automated VAT refunds, targeted budget fund marking, and agricultural payment escrow as priority use cases. [NPCK]

#CBDC #Kazakhstan #Fintech #DFC

·npck.kz·May 10, 2026

CBDC From Global Challenges to Implementation in Kazakhstan (NPCK)

Interconnect to Stabilize: Cross-Border Payments in a Fragmenting World (Banca D'Italia)

Banca d'Italia Governor Fabio Panetta argues that cross-border payments remain structurally deficient despite domestic progress, and that the G20 Roadmap's four targets—speed, cost, transparency, and access—remain unmet in the remittance segment, with average costs at 6.4% against a 3% objective. Bank of Italy researchers who posed as ordinary users and conducted actual stablecoin transfers found no systematic cost advantage once conversion fees into and out of crypto are included, with some corridors reaching 9%. Root causes include legal and time-zone complexity, fragmented messaging standards, a contracted correspondent banking network (down 30% since 2011), and opaque FX conversion costs. Panetta proposes national-level action plans along three lines: strengthening domestic infrastructure (ISO 20022, extended RTGS hours, central bank money as settlement anchor), improving regulatory frameworks (competition, transparency, FATF travel rule), and preserving global payment system openness. Whether geopolitical fragmentation via rival parallel systems, such as BRICS Pay, erodes interoperability is the key unresolved question. [Banca D'Italia]

#CrossBorder #Payments #Eurozone #Italy #Fintech #CryptoAssets #DFC

·bancaditalia.it·May 9, 2026

Interconnect to Stabilize: Cross-Border Payments in a Fragmenting World (Banca D'Italia)

The Future of Programmable Payments: Why CBDC and Stablecoins Need Each Other (LinkedIn)

The Future of Programmable Payments: Why CBDC and Stablecoins Need Each Other (LinkedIn) The Bank of Israel's Assaf David-Margalit posted a nice interpretation of the Bank of Canada's recently published "to tokenize or not to tokenize" working paper. Assaf argues that tokenized central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and regulated stablecoins should operate as complementary infrastructure layers rather than rivals. The Bank of Canada's paper's core insight is that a tokenized CBDC establishes a "technological floor" by offering superior collateral efficiency—eliminating default risk allows the central bank to support transaction volumes with lower collateral requirements, crowding out inefficient stablecoins through market discipline. Assaf distinguishes programmable payments infrastructure (capable of interacting with smart contracts) from programmable money (which would compromise fungibility), asserting that CBDC should provide the settlement layer while private stablecoins innovate at the application layer using CBDC as the reserve asset. [LinkedIn]

#CBDC #Fintech #Programmability #Stablecoins #SmartContracts #DFC #Payments

·linkedin.com·May 9, 2026

The Future of Programmable Payments: Why CBDC and Stablecoins Need Each Other (LinkedIn)

After Acacia: The Next Era of Financial System Innovation? (RBA)

[March 25, 2026] Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Assistant Governor Brad Jones foreshadowed the conclusions from the Project Acacia. Assisted with regulatory relief from ASIC and AUSTRAC, industry participants in Project Acacia explored 20 use cases involving a range of assets, forms of money and settlement arrangements. It found that tokenisation and related infrastructure changes can materially reduce settlement frictions, counterparty risk and manual processing in wholesale markets, especially in fixed income and term deposits, and support new asset structures and investor segments, However, large‑scale adoption is constrained by entrenched network effects, legal uncertainty (enforcement of on‑chain records, settlement finality, licensing perimeter, prudential treatment) and the absence of a coordinated public‑private strategy to scale from pilots to commercial deployment. [RBA]

#Australia #CBDC #wCBDC #Fintech #Tokenization #DFC

·web.archive.org·May 9, 2026

After Acacia: The Next Era of Financial System Innovation? (RBA)

To Tokenize, or Not to Tokenize: The Design Question for a CBDC (Bank of Canada)

The Bank of Canada published a paper that develops a general equilibrium model to assess whether a central bank digital currency (CBDC) should be tokenized—deployable on programmable ledgers to compete with stablecoins—or non-tokenized and confined to off-chain markets, where traditional and crypto banks coexist. Tokenization matters for equilibrium only when collateral use differs across sectors; the three governing structural parameters are crypto-bank pledgeability, crypto-asset scarcity, and the social valuation of on-chain transactions. For institutional design, tokenized CBDC crowds out stablecoins and improves welfare when crypto banks are unreliable and crypto collateral is scarce, whereas non-tokenized CBDC may dominate when on-chain activity is less socially desirable or bond-collateral reallocation to the crypto sector is itself welfare-improving; both forms reduce bank lending, posing a payment-efficiency-versus-intermediation trade-off. [Bank of Canada]

#CBDC #Canada #Fintech #DFC

·bankofcanada.ca·May 8, 2026

To Tokenize, or Not to Tokenize: The Design Question for a CBDC (Bank of Canada)

Smartphone Instead of Wallet: Mobile Payment is Booming (EHI)

The EHI Retail Institute's "Payment Systems in Retail 2026" reports that mobile payment reached 19.3% of non-cash transactions at German point-of-sale in 2025, up from 12.8% in 2024, representing 9.3% of approximately 20 billion annual transactions. Growth was partly enabled by Apple opening its near-field communication interface to third-party apps following European Commission intervention. Cash fell to 32.3% of turnover; card rose to 65.1%, led by Girocard (40.5%), with international debit cards gaining 2.5 percentage points to 9.4%. The unresolved question is whether continued contactless displacement of cash will prompt regulatory reassessment of legal-tender obligations. [EHI]

#Payments #Fintech #Germany #Cash #MobileMoney #Wallets #DFC

·ehi.org·May 6, 2026

Smartphone Instead of Wallet: Mobile Payment is Booming (EHI)

Legal Tender -A Barbarous Relic in the Digital Currency Era (SSRN)

In a paper posted on SSRN, Christian Pfister argues that granting legal tender status to retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in advanced economies is a conceptually weak and potentially distortionary extension of a historically contingent, often obsolete institution. The paper critiques recent IMF legal analyses for presuming a “digital cash” equivalence and for conflating the unit of account, the issuer, and specific payment instruments when defining legal tender. Pfister shows that modern payment efficiency, financial inclusion, and safety can be achieved through regulation and public infrastructure without legal tender, and that combining legal tender status with regulated aggressive pricing of public rails could crowd out deposits, weaken bank intermediation, and recreate public “walled gardens.” This raises a core design question: whether any residual role for legal tender should attach to the unit of account, central bank liabilities, or particular instruments, and how to do so without impairing monetary transmission, competition, or innovation. [SSRN]

#CBDC #Fintech #LegalTender #DFC

·papers.ssrn.com·May 5, 2026

Legal Tender -A Barbarous Relic in the Digital Currency Era (SSRN)

The Impact of Stablecoins on the International Monetary and Financial System (BIS)

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper that argues that dollar‑denominated stablecoins primarily reinforce existing currency hierarchies while creating new channels for digital dollarization in emerging markets and developing economies. They document rapid, dollar‑centric growth, with stablecoins already acting as private store‑of‑value and payment instruments that circumvent weak domestic banking systems and capital controls. This threatens monetary sovereignty and complicates capital‑flow management, while simultaneously deepening demand for short‑term United States public debt via reserve portfolios. The authors frame policy choices around three paths: niche crypto‑only use, destabilizing “digital dollarization,” and tightly regulated domestic integration. [BIS]

#Stablecoins #EMDEs #BIS #Fintech #CryptoAssets #Financial Stability #DFC

·bis.org·May 5, 2026

The Impact of Stablecoins on the International Monetary and Financial System (BIS)

Progressing Fund Tokenisation (UK FCA)

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (UK FCA)sets out final rules and guidance to accelerate tokenisation of authorised funds and introduce an optional “direct to fund” dealing model using issues-and-cancellations accounts instead of manager box dealing. The statement clarifies that on-chain ledgers can be primary books and records, public distributed ledgers and smart contracts are permitted subject to outcome‑based controls, and tokenised units may sit across multiple blockchains within a class. It tightens ring‑fencing around umbrella cash by constraining omnibus issue-and-cancellation accounts under protected cell legislation, while dropping a proposed mandatory client‑money fallback and instead imposing enhanced reconciliation and unattributed‑cash rules. The package signals openness to stablecoins and tokenised gilts for settlement and operations under an interim waiver‑based regime, while deferring full alignment with the new crypto-asset framework and future composable “tokenised portfolio management” models. [UK FCA]

#Regulation #Fintech #Tokenization #UnitedKingdom

·fca.org.uk·May 5, 2026

Progressing Fund Tokenisation (UK FCA)

The BCEAO Invites Submissions for Research on Financial Inclusion (BCEAO)

The Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) is inviting submissions for the 2026 Abdoulaye FADIGA Prize, which rewards high‑quality economic research on West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) economies. It explicitly invites research on financial inclusion and digital innovation, including work on how cryptocurrencies, mobile money, central bank digital currencies, and fintech can expand access to financial services in WAEMU, while rigorously assessing associated risks, regulatory and supervisory implications, and their interaction with payment systems, financial stability, and monetary policy transmission in the Union. [BCEAO]

#WAEMU #Fintech #CBDC #MobileMoney #CryptoAssets #Stablecoins #DFC

·bceao.int·May 5, 2026

The BCEAO Invites Submissions for Research on Financial Inclusion (BCEAO)

The Impact of Stablecoins: Considerations for BaaS Banks (Crowe LLP)

Crowe LLP consultants argue that stablecoins pose a structural challenge to banking-as-a-service (BaaS) banks that extends beyond payments into deposit composition, treasury workflows, and customer relationships. With wallet-based infrastructure stablecoins consolidate functions previously distributed across multiple intermediaries. For BaaS banks, the disintermediation risk is less about individual payment flows than about becoming peripheral to the liquidity and settlement environments where fintech partnerships operate. The piece offers a tiered decision framework — monitor, prepare, or act — calibrated to fee-income exposure and partner behavior. However, whether stablecoin adoption remains confined to discrete use cases or becomes foundational infrastructure remains an unresolved question. [Crowe LLP]

#Fintech #Stablecoins #Regulation #FinancialStability #UnitedStates #DFC

·crowe.com·May 3, 2026

The Impact of Stablecoins: Considerations for BaaS Banks (Crowe LLP)

Banks in the Age of Stablecoins: Lessons from Their Historical Responses to Financial Innovations (FRB)

Federal Reserve Board (FRB) economists argue, in a May 2026 FEDS Note, that banks historically respond to disintermediation threats through regulatory advocacy, product innovation, and strategic partnership rather than passive retreat, and apply that framework to stablecoins. Drawing on the money market fund (MMF) episode of the 1970s–80s and the PayPal/Venmo experience, the authors show that banks eventually recaptured market share despite initial disadvantage. However, stablecoins present a compounded challenge, combining MMFs' regulatory-arbitrage dynamic with payment platforms' technological differentiation, while introducing faster potential run dynamics via 24/7 blockchain settlement. Whether aggregate deposit levels contract materially depends on how stablecoin issuers structure their reserves. [FRB]

#Fintech #Stablecoins #UnitedStates #Regulation #FinancialStability #DFC

·federalreserve.gov·May 3, 2026

Banks in the Age of Stablecoins: Lessons from Their Historical Responses to Financial Innovations (FRB)

Central Bank Digital Currency and Monetary Architecture (Dirk Niepelt)

In a literature review that has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Economic Literature, Dirk Niepelt argues that the macroeconomic consequences of retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) depend primarily on the policy choices accompanying its introduction. Organizing the survey around a neutrality result, the paper demonstrates that bank disintermediation does not independently constitute a source of non-neutrality, provided the central bank recycles CBDC proceeds to banks on deposit-equivalent terms. Most existing research conflates policy-contingent with fundamental sources of non-neutrality, obscuring the extent of policymaker control. Because CBDC represents a structural shift in monetary architecture rather than a technical payment upgrade, it raises political economy questions that exceed the conventional mandate of central banks. [Niepelt.ch]

#CBDC #Fintech #DFC #FinancialStability

·niepelt.ch·May 2, 2026

Central Bank Digital Currency and Monetary Architecture (Dirk Niepelt)

On the Resilience of Payment Methods (NBER)

The U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) published a paper that argues, using multi-source U.S. and cross-country evidence, that cash functions as critical fallback liquidity when electricity outages disable digital payment infrastructure during natural disasters. Event studies across store-level transaction data, card aggregates, and household scanner records show that hurricanes generate persistent outages, shifting spending composition sharply toward cash, while pre-disaster expenditure spikes are credit-financed stockpiling. The finding that payment-system fragility is a first-order attribute of any instrument has direct implications for regulators overseeing cashless transitions, mandatory acceptance rules, and the design of offline-capable central bank digital currencies. [NBER]

#NBER #Payments #Cash #Fintech #Offline #DFC #Resilience

·nber.org·May 2, 2026

On the Resilience of Payment Methods (NBER)

Meta Rolls Out Stablecoin Payments (Coindesk)

Meta has rolled out digital currency payouts for select creators in Colombia and the Philippines. The payouts use the USDC stablecoin on either the Solana or Polygon blockchain networks, processed via Stripe’s Link wallet and accompanied by tax reporting from both Meta and Stripe. The initiative marks Meta's return to stablecoins after it attempted to introduce the Libra token, later renamed Diem, only to shut down the project amid regulatory scrutiny in 2022. [Coindesk] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1141348158001625/

#Solana #Polygon #Stripe #Fintech #Facebook #Meta #Payments #Diem #Libra #Stablecoins #DFC

·coindesk.com·May 2, 2026

Meta Rolls Out Stablecoin Payments (Coindesk)

BOE Considers Keeping Digital Pound On Ice (Bloomberg)

The Bank of England (BOE) and HM Treasury (HMT) are reportedly considering slowing down the digital pound project to defer making an immediate firm decision to approve or scrap it. Officials have been encouraged by private-sector innovation—especially tokenized deposits—that could deliver many CBDC benefits (faster, cheaper payments) within the existing regulated banking system, reducing the urgency to build a central-bank solution. The project has faced skepticism from the public, Parliament, and even BOE Governor Andrew Bailey, who remains unconvinced of the need for a retail CBDC. A decision to build would entail upfront costs in the hundreds of millions of pounds (later offset by CBDC income), voluntary participation by banks, and risk of political backlash over privacy concerns. [Bloomberg]

#CBDC #Fintech #UnitedKingdom #DFC

·bloomberg.com·May 1, 2026

BOE Considers Keeping Digital Pound On Ice (Bloomberg)

For a Political Economy of Central Bank Digital Currency (REP)

In this 2024 Revue d’Economie Politique (REP) article, Christian Pfister applies a positive (political economy) rather than normative framework to retail central bank digital currency (rCBDC). He maps stakeholder incentives across governments, central banks, regulators, incumbent banks, and fintech firms, then tests whether stated policy rationales align with those incentives. He concludes that publicly foregrounded motives, like financial inclusion, payment system safety, monetary sovereignty, and privacy, are analytically weak or already reached in developed economies. The dominant but largely unstated drivers are fiscal, such as seigniorage maximization through balance-sheet expansion, permanent rollover of sovereign debt held as rCBDC backing, and reduced tax evasion. Setting rCBDC remuneration at zero, officially framed as “do no harm” to bank intermediation, simultaneously serves those seigniorage objectives while suppressing a monetary policy transmission channel that the academic literature broadly endorses. For institutional design, combining legal tender status with fee exemptions advantages rCBDC in ways that raise competitive-neutrality concerns and risk crowding out private innovation. In non-democratic settings, programmable money creates structural conditions for mass surveillance. [REP]

#Fintech #CBDC

·shs.cairn.info·Apr 30, 2026

For a Political Economy of Central Bank Digital Currency (REP)