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The G7 is preparing a communique that will detail plans for a working group to investigate the financial stability implications of stablecoins. It will include central banks and the IMF, under the leadership of the ECB's Benoît Cœuré.

SWIFT has concluded a trial to integrate its "global payment initiative" with Singapore's Fast And Secure Transfers (FAST) domestic instant payment service, that linked 17 banks across seven countries. It said all payments in the trial were settled within between 13 and 25 seconds.

A possible policy impact could come from Libra's use as a safe haven. It may be easier for people to flee to Libra than to dollar assets, which could impact exchange rates worldwide. To the extent Libra attracts depositors away from banks, it could have an impact on banks' access to funding.

Global payment services provider Swift has said that its new cross-border payments platform is coping with greater consumer demand for speed and transparency. Swift launched its global payments initiative, or GPI, in 2017, in an attempt to speed up cross-border payments systems.

The authors warn of several financial stability risks that digital currencies pose. Many of their points echo recent comments by two senior Chinese central bank officials. The authors suggest central banks take the first step towards their own digital currency by offering settlement services to e-money providers.

China's cabinet, the State Council, has given the go-head for the next stage of the central bank's digital currency programme, according to Wang Xin, director of the central bank's research bureau.

For the first time in the US, in 2018, cash was not the most frequently used means of payment, a new Fed report finds. The report shows that consumers used cash for 26% of payments last year, four percentage points lower than 2017. Cash now sits just under debit cards, which rose from 26% in 2017 to 28% last year. On average, consumers last year made 11 cash payments per month, down from 12 in 2017, while total payments increased from 41 to 43 transactions per month.

The proliferation of crypto assets may create a multicurrency environment prone to monetary and exchange rate volatility, warned St. Louis Fed President James Bullard. "Cryptocurrencies may unwittingly be pushing in the wrong direction in trying to solve an important social problem, which is how best to facilitate market-based exchange."

The Board of the Bank for International Settlements has approved the establishment of a BIS Innovation Hub to foster international collaboration on innovative financial technology within the central banking community.

Riksbank's Hanna Armelius: Central banks need to consider issuing digital currencies or leave citizens vulnerable to market power. Cashless societies could leave payment systems vulnerable to "increasing monopoly power … if there's no sort of competition from central bank money."

Regulators may be seeing a distorted picture of global credit markets because they are failing to fully account for "fintech shadow banks", Amit Seru said in recent remarks. The professor of finance at Stanford University told an audience of central bankers in Basel that lending originating in the shadow banking sector had "dramatically increased" in recent years. Many of these firms were taking advantage of financial technology and lighter regulations to grow rapidly, he said.

"Cambodia launched the pilot of a blockchain-powered payment system this week, as the South-east Asian country aims to reduce money transfer costs and improve financial inclusion. The application, know as the Bakong Project, connects financial institutions and payment providers, enabling users to pay and make transactions in real time without fees, according to Cambodia's central bank."

"I think practical transactions allow you to see the potential benefits [of blockchain], such as the reduction in settlement time," says Paul Snaith, the multilateral lender's head of operations for capital markets. He was speaking to WatersTechnology ahead of the one-year anniversary of the bank's issuance of the first blockchain bond, Bond-i.

The BIS is seeking to fill the top spot in its new Innovation Hub to manage the selection and execution of projects across multiple Hub Centers with the aim of increasing knowledge in areas of critical interest to central banks and with a view towards the production of potential global public goods.

The majority of respondents believe central banks should issue CBDCs. A total of 29% of respondents say CBDCs should be limited to wholesale purposes; while 24% favour CBDCs at the retail level. However, a 43% say central banks should steer clear of them altogether.

The Federal Reserve is still weighing up the possibility of launching a round-the-clock real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system, but will reach a decision "soon", chair Jerome Powell said.

The US has several private real-time networks offered by payments providers and big banks. But the Fed says these alternatives have important limitations, like the lack of a universal infrastructure. "Most of these services rely on 'closed-loop' approaches, meaning that users signed up to one service cannot exchange payments with users signed up to other services," the Fed statement noted.

Indonesia's Financial Services Authority (OJK) has said it has closed hundreds of fintech firms this year, after companies were found charging inflated fees and recovering money by threatening customers.

Central banks around the world need to bridge the existing data gap on crypto assets to better contain future financial risks arising from them, according to research published today by the European Central Bank.