Yet these are important investments because payments are of strategic importance to financial institutions. They are the key touchpoint with clients and provide the basis for offering other services. Digital innovation undoubtedly has the potential to transform the payments landscape around the globe. In some areas, this is a welcome push. For example, the cross-border payment system is in urgent need of reform and its improvement has been earmarked as a G20 priority. In other areas, innovation could mean competition and disruption. To ensure that the Swiss payments ecosystem is in a position to absorb innovations and respond to user demands, while maintaining its trademark efficiency and safety, the SNB has engaged in a dialogue with stakeholders. While recognising that the ultimate solutions will need to come from the private sector, the SNB can help shape a common ‘Swiss Payments Vision’ that will help the various stakeholders to better position themselves vis-à-vis the new technologies in the Swiss payments ecosystem. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have accelerated the transformation of the payments landscape for users and providers alike. But payments is only one area faced with digital disruption. What about other areas – for instance, areas that stand to be affected by big data and automation? Big data and automation The trend towards a digital economy is also generating huge amounts of new data. Nowadays, more data are created every day than all of humanity created during the entire 20th century. This flood of information enables new ways of monitoring and analysing the economy.

We are therefore participating in a project called ‘Financial Sector Information Sharing and Analysis Centre’ (FS-ISAC), which was launched in 2020 under the direction of the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC). Together with the Swiss financial market infrastructure provider, SIX Group Ltd., the SNB is developing a new Secure Swiss Finance Network (SSFN). The aim of this project is to increase the security and resilience of network connections to the SIC system and to other financial market infrastructures. The new network is based on the SCION protocol developed at ETH Zurich. 13 If used by internet service providers, this protocol could prevent malicious or accidental re-routing of data and significantly reduce the threat of so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks). 14  Concluding remarks The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major crisis and challenge for all of us. Many people have died or lost their jobs, and many have suffered financial hardship. Central banks have taken decisive action – initially to prevent a spiralling financial crisis, and later to support the economy. In Switzerland, timely and effective collaboration between different actors became a hallmark of the crisis response. The crisis has reaffirmed central banks’ role as effective crisis managers. It has also demonstrated how important it is for central banks to act swiftly and have flexible and effective policy tools at hand. However, the pandemic’s implications for central banking extend far beyond short-term crisis management. In a sense, the crisis has pushed businesses, financial market participants and central banks forward into the future.