An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:
Central bank digital currencies have the potential to replace cashbut adoption could take time, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said Wednesday.
“CBDCs can replace cash that is costly to distribute in island economies,” she said at the Singapore FinTech Festival on Wednesday. “They can provide resilience in more advanced economies. And they can improve financial inclusion where few people have bank accounts.” (…) “CBDCs would offer a safe and inexpensive alternative (to cash). They would also offer a bridge between private funds and a standard to measure their value, just like the cash today that we can withdraw from our banks,” the IMF chief said.
The IMF said that more than 100 countries are exploring CBDCs, representing around 60% of countries worldwide. “The level of global interest in CBDCs is unprecedented. Several central banks have already launched pilot projects or even issued a CBDC,” the IMF said in a September report. According to a survey conducted in 2022 by the Bank for International Settlements, among the 86 central banks surveyed, 93% said they were exploring CBDCs, while 58% said they were likely or could potentially issue a retail CBDC in the short to medium term. But as of June, only 11 countries had adopted CBDCs, 53 others were in an advanced planning stage and 46 were researching the subject, according to data from the Atlantic Council…
On Wednesday, the fund launched a CBDC manual as a reference guide for policy makers around the world…
Georgieva also said that artificial intelligence “could amplify some of the benefits of CBDCs” by providing accurate credit scoring and personalized support.
