FinTech Notes

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FinTech Notes

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IMF Publications

Fintech Notes offer practical advice from IMF staff members to policymakers on important issues. The views expressed in Fintech Notes are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Contents

• Central Bank Exploration of Tokenized Reserves
  • Published: November 18, 2025
  • Summary: How should central banks explore tokenized reserves? Central banks are increasingly exploring how to make their reserves available to selected banks using distributed ledger technology, referred to as tokenized reserves.
• Financial Integrity Implications of Retail Central Bank Digital Currencies (rCBDCs)
  • Published: November 14, 2025
  • Summary: How should the international anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) standards be applied in a retail CBDC (rCBDC) setting?
• Evaluating the Implications of CBDC for Financial Stability
  • Published: November 12, 2025
  • Summary: How could practitioners assess the domestic financial stability implications of retail CBDC? This chapter identifies six key transmission channels through which CBDC can affect financial stability—either negatively or positively.
• Payment Resilience in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States: Lessons for Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)
  • Published: November 12, 2025
  • Summary: What lessons emerge from payment resilience in Fragile and Conflict-affected States (FCS) and how could they be applied to CBDC?
• The Impact of Central Bank Digital Currency on Payments Competition
  • Published: November 11, 2025
  • Summary: How would CBDC affect competition in the payments market? If introduced, CBDC can serve as a payment instrument, expanding end users’ transaction choices, and as a platform infrastructure, broadening intermediaries’ opportunities to provide and innovate in payment and financial services.
• Selected Legal Considerations for Central Bank Digital Currencies
  • Published: November 7, 2025
  • Summary: What are the selected legal considerations for retail CBDC (rCBDC) and wholesale CBDC (wCBDC)? First, with respect to rCBDC, this chapter discusses the mechanisms through which rCBDC is sanctioned as a currency; the legal basis for its issuance and provision of a payment platform; and the central ba
• Technology Solutions to Support Central Bank Digital Currency with Limited Connectivity: A Review of Existing Approaches
  • Published: August 7, 2025
  • Summary: This note explores the implementation of central bank digital currencies in environments with limited connectivity, emphasizing the need for offline solutions to enhance financial inclusion.
• Growing Retail Digital Payments: The Value of Interoperability
  • Published: June 25, 2025
  • Summary: Policymakers in many countries aim to increase the uptake of retail digital payment systems. This Note examines whether interoperability can help achieve this goal.
• Private Law Aspects of Token-Based Central Bank Digital Currencies
  • Published: March 14, 2025
  • Summary: In designing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), it is imperative that central banks carefully consider its legal foundations.
• Estimating the Impact of Digital Money on Cross-Border Flows: Scenario Analysis Covering the Intensive Margin
  • Published: February 7, 2025
  • Summary: Digital money and digital payments innovations have the potential for improving cross-border payments by reducing costs, enhancing speed, and improving transparency.
• Tokenization and Financial Market Inefficiencies
  • Published: January 29, 2025
  • Summary: Most financial assets are digital today. Tomorrow, they may be tokenized. Tokenization implies recording and transferring assets on a widely shared and trusted digital ledger that can be programmed.
• Implications of Central Bank Digital Currency for Monetary Operations
  • Published: October 4, 2024
  • Summary: This Fintech Note aims to analyze how the issuance of central bank digital currency (CBDC) could affect monetary operations, which include central banks managing the demand and supply of reserves to achieve a desired stance of monetary policy.
• Positioning Central Bank Digital Currency in the Payments Landscape
  • Published: October 2, 2024
  • Summary: The IMF is frequently approached by central banks seeking guidance on the balance between central bank digital currency (CBDC), fast payment systems (FPS), and electronic money (e-money) solutions.
• Central Bank Digital Currency Adoption: Inclusive Strategies for Intermediaries and Users
  • Published: September 21, 2024
  • Summary: Among the countries that have launched central bank digital currency (CBDC) or are conducting large-scale pilots, adoption remains slow and limited due to various challenges such as lack of public awareness and trust, preference for existing payment methods, and inadequate incentives for intermediar
• Central Bank Digital Currency Data Use and Privacy Protection
  • Published: August 30, 2024
  • Summary: This note offers a framework to help countries navigate, as well as tools to help them manage, the trade-offs between CBDC data use and privacy protection.
• Cyber Resilience of the Central Bank Digital Currency Ecosystem
  • Published: August 27, 2024
  • Summary: Over 100 central banks around the globe are exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to modernize payment systems. They aim to explore potential benefits, risks, and the broad range of new capabilities CBDCs might offer.
• Cross-Border Payments with Retail Central Bank Digital Currencies: Design and Policy Considerations
  • Published: May 15, 2024
  • Summary: Many central banks are currently exploring the possibility of issuing retail central bank digital currency (CBDC). While the primary objective varies between jurisdictions, many central banks consider improved cross-border payments as a potential benefit and previous work has shown that CBDC can hel
• Central Bank Digital Currency and Other Digital Payments in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Regional Survey
  • Published: March 26, 2024
  • Summary: This Fintech Note reports key findings from the Sub-Saharan Africa Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and Digital Payments Survey, shedding light on the motivations, benefits, and challenges of CBDC adoption, as well as the developments of digital private money and crypto assets in sub-Saharan Afr
• Macro-Financial Implications of Foreign Crypto Assets for Small Developing Economies
  • Published: December 5, 2023
  • Summary: To explore risks associated with digital money, this Fintech Note simulates the hypothetical large-scale adoption of crypto assets in a model of a small open economy.
• Central Bank Digital Currency's Role in Promoting Financial Inclusion
  • Published: September 22, 2023
  • Summary: Financial inclusion is a key policy objective that central banks, especially those in emerging and low-income countries, are considering for retail central bank digital currency (CBDC).
• Capital Flow Management Measures in the Digital Age (2): Design Choices for Central Bank Digital Currency
  • Published: September 15, 2023
  • Summary: This fintech note looks at how capital flow measures (CFMs) could be implemented with central bank digital currency (CBDC), and what benefits, risks and complexities could arise. There are several implications of the analysis.
• Implications of Central Bank Digital Currencies for Monetary Policy Transmission
  • Published: September 15, 2023
  • Summary: This fintech note presents an analysis of the implications of central bank digital currency (CBDC) for monetary policy. In our framework, the implications of CBDC issuance on monetary policy are intermediated by its impact on key parts of the macroeconomic environment.
• A Guide to Central Bank Digital Currency Product Development
  • Published: September 8, 2023
  • Summary: As central bank digital currency (CBDC) projects progress around the world, there is increased need for a project management methodology that is appropriate for CBDC.
• How Should Central Banks Explore Central Bank Digital Currency?
  • Published: September 8, 2023
  • Summary: Digitalization of the economy provides both challenges and opportunities. Central banks should ensure that they have the capacity to continue to meet their policy objectives in the digital age. It is in this context that central bank digital currency (CBDC) should be evaluated.
• Generative Artificial Intelligence in Finance: Risk Considerations
  • Published: August 18, 2023
  • Summary: In recent years, technological advances and competitive pressures have fueled rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial sector, and this adoption is set to accelerate with the recent emergence of generative AI (GenAI).
• Institutional Arrangements for Fintech Regulation: Supervisory Monitoring
  • Published: June 23, 2023
  • Summary: The impact of fintech is growing rapidly worldwide, although this growth is uneven across jurisdictions. Depending on the effect of fintech, authorities may adopt a passive approach of monitoring fintech, try and capture new business models in existing regulatory frameworks, develop bespoke regulati
• The Rise of Payment and Contracting Platforms
  • Published: June 16, 2023
  • Summary: This Note explores the design and governance of platforms to enhance cross-border payments in line with public policy goals.
• Taxing Stablecoins
  • Published: May 25, 2023
  • Summary: This Fintech Note specifically considers the challenges that tax law systems face to achieve neutrality in taxing transactions in one specific type of crypto asset: stablecoins.
• The Rise and Impact of Fintech in Latin America
  • Published: March 28, 2023
  • Summary: In the past decade, fintech has shaken up the financial sector in Latin America providing innovations in lending, payments, insurance, and regulation and compliance. This paper examines this development by focusing on both fintech services and regulation.
• Trust Bridges and Money Flows: A Digital Marketplace to Improve Cross-Border Payments
  • Published: March 3, 2023
  • Summary: Cross-border payments are expensive, slow, and opaque. These problems reflect multiple frictions, many of which boil down to limited trust among counterparties. Trust plays a central role in exchanging credit-based money.
• Towards Central Bank Digital Currencies in Asia and the Pacific: Results of a Regional Survey
  • Published: September 27, 2022
  • Summary: Drawing on survey responses from 34 Asian economies and country case studies, this note takes stock of recent developments related to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and crypto assets in Asia.
• Regulating the Crypto Ecosystem: The Case of Stablecoins and Arrangements
  • Published: September 26, 2022
  • Summary: Stablecoins have experienced periods of rapid growth, accelerated links with traditional finance. Without proper regulation, contagion risks to wider financial sector will increase.
• Regulating the Crypto Ecosystem: The Case of Unbacked Crypto Assets
  • Published: September 26, 2022
  • Summary: Unbacked crypto assets are the oldest and most popular type of crypto assets, relying not on any backing asset for value but instead on supply and demand. They were originally developed to democratize payments but are mostly used for speculation.
• Digital Currencies and Energy Consumption
  • Published: June 7, 2022
  • Summary: Whether in crypto assets or in CBDCs, design choices can make an important difference to the energy consumption of digital currencies. This paper establishes the main components and technological options that determine the energy profile of digital currencies.
• Capital Flow Management Measures in the Digital Age: Challenges of Crypto Assets
  • Published: May 9, 2022
  • Summary: Capital flow management measures (CFMs) can be part of the broader policy toolkit to help countries reap the benefits of capital flows while managing the associated risks.
• Behind the Scenes of Central Bank Digital Currency: Emerging Trends, Insights, and Policy Lessons
  • Published: February 7, 2022
  • Summary: Central banks are increasingly pondering whether to issue their own digital currencies to the general public, so-called retail central bank digital currency (CBDC).
• Keeping Pace with Change: Fintech and the Evolution of Commercial Law
  • Published: January 27, 2022
  • Summary: This note explores the interactions between new technologies with key areas of commercial law and potential legal changes to respond to new developments in technology and businesses.
• Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms: A Primer for Supervisors
  • Published: January 25, 2022
  • Summary: Technology plays an increasingly important role in financial services. With the pace of technological inno-vation moving ever faster, the role new technology plays in the provision of financial services is becoming increasingly fundamental.
• BigTech in Financial Services: Regulatory Approaches and Architecture
  • Published: January 22, 2022
  • Summary: BigTech firms are gradually entering the financial sector and becoming important service providers, particularly in emerging markets.
• Virtual Assets and Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (1): Some Legal and Practical Considerations
  • Published: October 14, 2021
  • Summary: The purpose of this note is to assist countries in their understanding and mitigation of the money laundering (ML), terror financing (TF), and financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (PF) risks related to virtual assets (VAs).
• Virtual Assets and Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (2): Effective Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism Regulatory and Supervisory Framework—Some Legal and Practical Considerations
  • Published: October 14, 2021
  • Summary: The purpose of this note is to discuss the necessary anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) measures and provide examples of practical solutions to implement them.
• The Impact of Fintech on Central Bank Governance: Key Legal Issues
  • Published: August 24, 2021
  • Summary: Fintech presents unique opportunities for central banks. The rapid changes in technology that are transforming the financial system will allow central banks to enhance the execution of various of their core functions, such as currency issuance and payment systems.
• Distributed Ledger Technology Experiments in Payments and Settlements
  • Published: June 25, 2020
  • Summary: Major transformations in payment and settlements have occurred in generations. The first generation was paper-based. Delivery times for payment instruments took several days domestically and weeks internationally. The second generation involved computerization with batch processing.
• Institutional Arrangements for Fintech Regulation and Supervision
  • Published: January 9, 2020
  • Summary: Fintech developments are shaking up mandates within the existing regulatory architecture. It is not uncommon for financial sector agencies to have multiple policy objectives. Most often the policy objectives for these agencies reflect prudential, conduct and financial stability policy objectives.
• Regulation of Crypto Assets
  • Published: January 9, 2020
  • Summary: The rapid growth of crypto assets has raised questions about the appropriate regulatory perimeter and the ability of the existing regulatory architecture to adapt to changing conditions.
• The Rise of Digital Money
  • Published: July 12, 2019
  • Summary: This paper marks the launch of a new IMF series, Fintech Notes. Building on years of IMF staff work, it will explore pressing topics in the digital economy and be issued periodically.