A critical evaluation of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs): payments’ final frontier?

Abstract

CBDCs are a digital form of fiat money. CBDCs raise a number of challenges in terms of payments’ privacy. CBDCs may be implemented in two models (wholesale and retail). CBDCs may be used on a cross-border basis, subject to the connectivity of the technology. Cross-border use of some countries’ CBDCs could even bring about, under certain conditions, a shift in geopolitical power, especially if challenger currencies were to eventually lead to a replacement of the USD as the global reserve currency. As regards the key question about the interoperability of CBDC systems with private payment networks, the answer relies on the choice of technology and the location of the CBDC’s ledger, that is within or outside of existing Central Bank clearing and payment systems. CBDCs could transform the way modern societies conduct payments and handle money. Possible challenges that CBDCs raise in connection to monetary policy and financial stability will likely be manageable. Any financial stability issues that remunerated CBDCs might raise, in the sense that they might be in competition with bank deposits, could arguably be dealt with by setting the interest rate that remunerated CBDCs might attract at a level that is not competitive with bank deposits. Similarly, CBDCs are not expected to raise issues with respect to monetary policy and money circulation since essentially CBDCs will act as a replacement of fiat money, albeit in a digital rather than physical form. CBDCs are going to be a completely different form of digital currency than cryptocurrencies, both in terms of technology and in the fact that there will be a centralized state issuer rather than a private one. They will not be volatile as cryptocurrencies, but whether they would be a stable store of value will depend on the state of foreign exchange (FX) markets and exchange rates set by those markets. Cybersecurity safeguards will prove indispensable to building the public’s trust in CBDCs; if money goes missing from the system due to a cyber-heist, then that would undermine consumer confidence in the CBDC system. Thus, strong cybersecurity safeguards will prove indispensable to building the public’s trust in CBDCs. CBDCs will have to be handled through a system that is not excessively energy hungry in contrast with cryptocurrency operations. CBDCs are meant to be inclusive, and not exclude the digitally handicapped part of the population. Cross-border use of CBDCs could herald a new era of seamless, faster, and cheaper cross-border payments. English property law has accommodated crypto assets as a distinct form of personal property; thus the right approach is that CBDCs is that CBDCs will readily be accommodated in English law as a digital version of fiat currency. Several major Central Banks around the world have announced plans to develop a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The development of CBDCs may be seen as an assertion of monetary sovereignty—perhaps the last chance to do so in the face of technological change—but also raises several socio-economic challenges. This article critically explores these issues, including the configuration of a CBDC system, depending on the level of involvement allowed for the commercial banking sector, with reference to the policy papers issued by global regulatory bodies (eg, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and International Monetary Fund (IMF)). It also touches on the utility of different technologies mooted by central banks and their impact on the preservation of consumer privacy. This article postulates that CBDCs, rather than merely heralding the return of the state in the realm of money and payments, constitute a final frontier in the field of digital money and digital payments.1 It is also arguable that any monetary policy and financial stability challenges that CBDCs might pose would be manageable through the appropriate use of interest rates and internally imposed caps on deposits and withdrawals. The digitization of international payments opens the window for uniformity of the means of exchange that may be used for international payments. The use of CBDCs on a cross-border basis is mostly an issue of technological connectivity, which is yet an unresolved, and difficult to resolve, matter. If connectivity is ensured, leading to widespread cross-border use of CBDCs, this could give rise to strong competition between countries to promote their own CBDCs and will signal a new era of faster and seamless cross-border payments. This could possibly lead to lower transaction costs for cross-border payments, which in turn would make migrant labour remittances to their home country much cheaper, adding serious social value to the cross-border use of CBDCs. Given that CBDCs will have an exchange rate of one equals one, vis-à-vis the underlying currencies adopting a foreign CBDC would be tantamount to currency substitution; in fact, several countries around the world have experimented with dollarization, namel