BIS, IMF and World Bank call for global co-ordination on central bank digital currencies

About 90% of the world's central banks are currently looking at creating digital versions of their currencies

The People's Bank of China building in Beijing. China's central bank was the first to begin experimenting with a digital currency in 2014. Reuters

The Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank made a joint call on Friday for global co-operation on central bank digital currencies.

Around 90 per cent of the world's central banks are currently looking at creating digital versions of their currencies, raising questions about how they will work and operate with each other.

"CBDCs [central bank digital currencies] offer the opportunity to start with a clean slate. It is crucially important that central banks take the cross-border dimension into account," Jon Cunliffe, chair of the committee on payments and market infrastructures and deputy governor for financial stability of the Bank of England, said in a report prepared for the G20 meeting in Italy.

"The implications of CBDCs, even if only intended for domestic use, will go beyond borders," said Tobias Adrian, financial counsellor and director of the IMF's monetary and capital markets department.

The report said that facilitating international payments with CBDCs could be achieved through different degrees of integration and co-operation, ranging from basic compatibility with common standards to the establishment of international payment infrastructures.

Inter-operability will be crucial while multilateral collaboration was also needed on the potential macrofinancial consequences CBDCs could cause, it said.