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This chapter first reviews the current stages of retail CBDC development before examining some of the common characteristics of retail CBDC projects being proposed in various jurisdictions. This chapter then examines the possible future of retail CBDC going forward.

This chapter reviews digital payment infrastructures at the retail, wholesale and cross-border levels, available operating and governance models and trade-offs. Various developments in the field of digital payments, key challenges and the role of the central banks in helping to address those challenges are introduced. This chapter starts by examining issues in retail payments, before moving on the wholesale and large-value payments, real-time gross settlement (RTGS) which is the core settlement of payment systems before examining cross-border payments. This chapter ends with an overview of the role of central banks in promoting digital payment infrastructures.

This chapter examines mobile payments and digital banking services. The past decade has seen a rapid increase in the use of alternative payment systems, away from cash to electronic payments. The digitalization of payments includes business-to-business (B2B), customer-to-business (C2B), and government-to-business and consumers (G2B/C), whether the payments are by computer, wire transfers, and point of sale (POS) systems. POS systems have become a standard in many retail outlets. Mobile payments use a smart device for contactless pay. Consumers see the increasing prevalence of payment systems when they go to the retail checkout or service counter. Worldwide, mobile payments are approaching 50% of digital. Digitalized payment systems are becoming more secure, decreasing concerns over mistaken payments, fraud, and errors. Consumers' confidence in value and usage decreases with age. Most fraud is due to scams and not hacking. Greater access to improved infrastructure and affordable smart devices will expand the usage of digitalized payment systems worldwide.

This chapter takes an overview look at open digital infrastructures for financial services: what they are, why they are important for digital financial landscape, and thus why the central banks might need to take an active role to promote them. This chapter also reviews some concrete examples of open digital infrastructures in various jurisdictions to give some context.

This chapter examines possible regulatory updates to address the challenges of monetary sovereignty and singleness of money. These two challenges are particularly pertinent to the new means of payments enabled by the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT). These new means of payment include cryptoassets such as bitcoin and ether, stablecoins and tokenized deposits. The degree to which these new means of payment can be a threat to monetary sovereignty and singleness of money can differ widely, depending on the contexts of the jurisdictions, as well as the details of these new means of payment themselves.

This chapter reviews new technologies, new types of players and new types of financial products that together are fundamentally affecting supply and demand dynamics in the financial sector and contributing to the emerging digital financial landscape. The aim of this chapter is to set a common understanding on the underlying forces of digital disruption in the financial sector before exploring the challenges to monetary and financial stability that are arising. In later chapters, the book will examine how central banks might deal with the challenges and help shape the emerging digital financial landscape.

This chapter first reviews the central banks' two key remits, monetary stability and financial stability, and examines how they will be affected either directly or indirectly by the emerging challenges relating to walled gardens, shadow banking, singleness of the money, customers' data rights, artificial intelligence (AI) ethics, cybersecurity and financial exclusion. This chapter will then review three possible areas of responses that the central banks might take to address the emerging challenges: (1) regulations, (2) promotion of open digital infrastructures and (3) central banks' capabilities upgrade. This chapter will then review possible tools that the central banks might use to implement actions in those three key areas.

This chapter first reviews some of the background concepts on central bank digital currency (CBDC) to provide a broad context, before diving into wholesale CBDC often a starting point for central banks to build CBDC prototypes based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), as it involves less complexity in experimentation. This chapter also examines cross-border CBDC, often an extension of wholesale CBDC prototypes based on DLT. The next chapter will then discuss retail CBDC as well as the prospects of economy-wide roll out of CBDC going forward.

This chapter reviews some of the technical background relating to the designs of digital infrastructures for financial services. Such technical background could be useful to the understanding of the design choices that the central banks and pertinent regulators face when developing or promoting open digital infrastructures for financial services. First, the chapter reviews modularity and interoperability in the design of digital infrastructure. The chapter then examines three broad architectural models of open digital infrastructures: decentralized, centralized and distributed. The chapter ends with some lessons learnt from the different architectural models that have been implemented in practice.