In a speech in New York on 1 November, Dong He, Deputy Director, Monetary and Capital Markets Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) talked about three main themes:

• the economic framework on how FinTech applications will affect financial services and the market structure;
• the current landscape of cross-border payments, and the possible evolution of cross-border payment systems; and
• the role of central banks, themselves, and the possible reasons for them to issue their own digital currencies.

Mr He’s speech was based on two IMF staff discussion notes, Virtual Currencies and Beyond: Initial Considerations and Fintech and Financial Services: Initial Considerations.