IMF Chief Georgieva At Singapore FinTech Event: "CBDCs can replace cash, improve cross-border payments"

The game is definitely afoot. 

And though Mme Georgieva isn't as over the top in her pitch as the BIS' General Manager, Agustín Carstens ("People Are Demanding Programmable Money") is in his, she is still a force to be reckoned with.

From the South China Morning Post, November 15:

IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva says central bank digital currencies can improve financial inclusion in places where few hold bank accounts

The three-day Singapore FinTech Festival brings together fintech industry players, investors, government representatives and commercial and central banks

Governments and central banks should step up the adoption of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to improve cross-border payments, which are currently “expensive, slow and available to few”, said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund ( IMF).

In a keynote address at the Singapore FinTech Festival on Wednesday, Georgieva said CBDCs could not only replace cash, which was costly to distribute in island economies, but improve financial inclusion in places where few hold bank accounts. However, the pace towards using CBDCs needed to pick up, she said.

The three-day major technology event brings together 62,000 participants across the fintech industry globally as well as investors, government representatives, and commercial and central banks. Attendees include Amazon, Binance, Grab, HSBC and JPMorgan.

“Adoption of CBDCs is nowhere close. But about 60 per cent of countries are exploring them in some form today,” Georgieva said. “To the extent CBDCs are deployed, they must be built to facilitate cross-border payments, which are at present expensive, slow, and available to few. Again, we must start this work today so we don’t have to back-pedal tomorrow.”

The Philippines understood the importance of the “financial inclusion” that Georgieva alluded to, President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr said in his keynote address at the event. The Southeast Asian country has one of the highest “unbanked” populations in the world or people without a bank account, according to the World Bank....

....MUCH MORE

In some respects making that speech in Singapore is preaching to the choir. From The Block, November 16:

 Monetary Authority of Singapore to start 'live' wholesale CBDC pilot