The Digitalization of Money

Speaker: Jean-Pierre Landau (Harvard Kennedy School and SciencesPo)

Recording of the online seminar on 27 August 2019.

More information: http://fbf.eui.eu/event/online-semina...

Digitalization has changed everything in our lives: how we communicate, organize, interact, move, and trade. Increasingly, it is also changing how we pay, and potentially how we count, transfer and store value. In short, digitalization is changing money—certainly in its role as a medium of exchange and maybe as a store of value and unit of account as well.

Despite electronic money (e-money) first appeared more than twenty years ago, their exchanges represent today still a small fraction of total financial movements. This is now changing fast, as mobile technology and the internet are joining forces to produce a silent revolution in payments. New forms of money are emerging while digital networks and platforms have the potential to transform and disrupt financial intermediation more broadly.

In this online seminar, Jean-Pierre Landau (Harvard Kennedy School and SciencesPo) discusses the future of money, in light of these evolutions. His presentation he also examines how digitalization can (1) increase the potential for currency competition (2) change the architecture of domestic and international monetary systems and (3) affect the respective role of public and private money. Dr. Landau makes a strong case for central banks to consider issuing their own digital currencies (CBDCs) as a way to protect the role of public money in a digitalized environment.


* The views and opinions expressed in this video are those of the speakers or authors in their personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Robert Schuman Centre or the European University Institute. *