From crypto to central bank digital currency, the podcast tracks the fintech boom

The rapid evolution of fintech promises to provide many consumers with broader access to better services, but it also raises the stakes for regulators and supervisors.

And while most fintech companies are small, they can grow quickly and can increase risk to people, businesses and industries, as the recent collapse of a major crypto firm shows.

We explore the different dimensions of fintech in a recent podcast series, which shows how the IMF’s research and policy recommendations are helping to advance the global conversation on these complex and consequential issues.

Our series shows how technology-driven innovation, including blockchain, delivers benefits such as increased efficiency, competition, and choice. However, some of these advances have yet to be tested and could pose new risks to financial stability.

Here’s how the five episodes of our new podcast series, featuring the voices of leaders from across the money and capital markets department, expand on all things fintech:

1.

Fintech as the future of finance focuses on revolutionizing the global financial system, from the Bahamas introducing a central bank digital currency, the sand dollar, to El Salvador and the Central African Republic adopting Bitcoin as legal tender.

2.

Central Bank Digital Currencies covers the benefits, challenges and policy considerations around these instruments, which have been adopted or explored by more than 100 countries. CBDCs have advantages over cash, including promoting financial inclusion due to their potential to reach people who do not have bank accounts and reducing transaction costs for cross-border payments.

3.

Fintech and financial stability explores how crypto assets and stock markets, which showed little correlation before the pandemic, have since begun to move

much more closely together. Importantly, crypto is no longer on the fringes of the financial system, and greater interconnection with other assets could facilitate the transmission of shocks and destabilize financial markets.

4.

Regulating Fintech establishes how regulation is not intended to stifle innovation, but rather to protect consumers and investors. Without it, fintech could fuel risks that could even threaten the stability of the financial system itself.

5.

Fintech in the PASF go behind the scenes of our

Financial Stability Assessment Programa comprehensive overview of potential systemic risks and details how fintech is increasingly prominent in these regular assessments.

The Fund’s podcasts are available on MFI.org and platforms, including

Apple podcast,

Spotify,

SoundCloud

and

Libsyne.