Last week Masayoshi Amamiya, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan, discussed the potential for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) at the Future of Payments Forum in Tokyo. He believes an important potential role is to enable interoperability between private payment systems.
He said that many advanced economies don’t really need a CBDC because, unlike Sweden, cash usage is not declining that rapidly. He also pointed to emerging economies such as the Bahamas and Cambodia, where the infrastructure was less developed and hence a CBDC provided greater advantages.
Turning to countries such as Japan, there is an expanding array of payment service providers. Digital money from one service provider is often not interoperable with another. The Deputy Governor didn’t mention names, but Apple and Google Pay are good examples, as are local initiatives like chat app Line Pay and by bank consortia, including SBI’s MoneyTap and Mizuho’s J-Coin.
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