Podcast: Central Banking launches Tech Talk series

Fintech has surged in importance for central banks over the past five years. A growing number of regulators have begun to explore the usefulness of, and in some places implement, new technology that could quickly transform legacy processes.

Distributed ledger technology prototypes and the establishment of fintech sandboxes were all the rage in 2018, but this year there has been a shift in focus towards central bank digital currencies and concerns around big tech.

Alongside this evolution, Central Banking has documented the biggest breakthroughs, as well as the challenges regulators and the wider financial system face.

In line with this mission, a new podcast series will delve deeper into the world of fintech through conversations with those on the front line. In our first episode, associate editor Rachael King and head of Central Banking’s Fintech Advisory Board, Adam Csabay, take a look back at some of the key events of 2019.

The year started off with Google being offered a payment system licence from the Central Bank of Ireland in January, a sign that tech behemoths could disrupt payment services substantially. The entry of Google into the market was followed shortly by a comprehensive report published by the Financial Stability Board, which considered the financial stability issues these firms might pose to the market, as well as the opportunities.

Later on in the year, Facebook took a foray into financial services, announcing it was going to launch a digital asset – libra. While the asset has so far been met largely with hostility from both governments and central banks, it forced many to take a look at their own regulatory regimes with regard to crypto asset oversight, especially in the realm of anti-money laundering.

At this stage of development, there is no set standard for how to approach this new asset class. Russia continues to consider a nationwide ban of the assets, while others have decided to segregate and regulate a number of crypto assets as securities.

The development of central bank digital currencies, cyber security stress tests and ‘greentech’ were also major themes over the course of the last 12 months.  

Index

00:00 Introduction

01:10 Big tech enters the market

02:30 Crypto asset regulation and CBDC developments

07:45 Facebook’s libra

10:15 Co-ordinating efforts

15:20 Cyber developments

19:20 Greentech and beyond

To hear the full podcast, listen in the player above, or download. Future podcasts in our CB On Air: Tech Talk series will be uploaded to centalbanking.com. CB On Air is also available via iTunes or podcast apps and from Google Podcasts (Android only).