Azerbaijan Launches the New Digital Payment Platform

Aligned with one of the main goals of the State Program, the CBA developed the Instant Payment System (hereinafter—IPS), which successfully launched on October 1st, 2020. The main rationale behind this initiative is to respond to the most recent challenges…

Albania—Chasing the Financially Excluded

Chasing excluded populations that don’t have access to financial services, which add up to around 60% of adult population, is considered to be crucial in addressing the heavily cash reliant economy in Albania and an important key to unlocking opportunities…

Buna: The Right Vision That is Being Delivered at the Right Time

Buna, the cross-border and multi-currency payment system, came to fruition on the 23rd of February 2020 as a culmination of an implementation program launched in 2018 that was preceded by a thorough feasibility study initiated in 2016. In fact, Buna’s…

Lithuania: Building a Fintech Success Story from a Regulatory Point of View

The ongoing technological transformation in the sphere of financial services has not only improved financial services themselves but also created new opportunities for countries willing to attract innovation. In recent years, Lithuania has emerged as…

BIS - Regulating Fintech: Many Approaches for Many Challenges

New tech-savvy players are entering the financial market left and right. The way they provide financial services would not be possible without the advances in financial technology we have witnessed in recent years. But traditional financial institutions…

Recent Evolution of the Retail Payments Market in Hungary

Over the last decade, the Hungarian payments market has gone through a major development, and the use of electronic payment methods is constantly growing. The Central Bank of Hungary (MNB) actively contributed to the favourable processes in line with…

Looking Back and Ahead: The Riksbank’s E-krona Project

The Swedish Riksbank’s work on analyzing the potential need and consequences of issuing a Central Bank Issued Digital Currency (CBDC), the e-krona, has attracted significant international attention. Many central banks around the world are also investigating…

The World Bank Group's Payment Systems & Financial Inclusion Initiatives

The development and implementation of safe and efficient national payments systems is an integral component of the World Bank Group’s (WBG) work to reduce poverty and boost shared prosperity. The National Payments System (NPS) is the underlying foundation…

Perspective: Weighing the Case for CBDCs

In this exclusive interview, former ECB Director General of Payment Systems and Market Infrastructure Jean-Michel Godeffroy weighs the case for central bank digital currencies.

In Conversation with Ivo Jenik

Sandboxes have come a long way since the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority pioneered the concept in 2016. CBPN was pleased to catch up with Ivo Jenik about his intersecting work on financial inclusion and regulatory sandboxes with the Consultative Group…