The International Monetary Fund, IMF, has said there is no universal case for central-bank digital currencies, CBDC.
Taking this position yesterday, the IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, urged policy makers to carefully weigh trade-offs as financial innovation enters a new phase with Nigeria and Bahamas being pioneers.
Bloomberg quoted Georgieva as saying, “So-called CBDCs could boost financial inclusion in some countries, while providing a secure backup for payment systems in others.”
She, however, cautioned that their design must also take financial-stability and privacy considerations into account to avoid a potential legislative “deal breaker.”
According to Bloomberg, she stated: “Policy makers will need to resolve many open questions, technical obstacles, and policy trade-offs.
“If CBDCs are designed prudently, they can potentially offer more resilience, more safety, greater availability, and lower costs than private forms of digital money” such as “unbacked crypto assets.”
