BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  To its advocates, the wave of innovation sweeping through the world of financial technology promises nothing short of revolution. ‘FinTech’ heralds the dawn of narrow banking and portfolio optimisation. It will change the nature of money, 1 shake the foundations of central banking and deliver nothing less than a democratic revolution for all who use financial services. Revolutions are not always abrupt, and sometimes their origins remain obscure. In noting the possibilities at the start of the Twentieth century, Keynes remarked that “the inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed … the various products of the whole earth … adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world…; [or] decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend…” Such global portfolio management was made possible by technological developments stretching back decades, ranging from the ‘pantelegraph’ of the 1860s – capable of transmitting signatures to verify bank deposits – to the cable buried deep beneath the Atlantic that could transmit eight words a minute. Such remote trade confirmation and low latency that made the Flash Boys of the day possible. The financial globalisation these innovations enabled was built on a much earlier, simpler, and more profoundly transformational development: the ledger. For there is no finance without the ability to record transactions, balances, and obligations.

Enabling the FinTech Transformation  We are actively exploring how new financial technologies could support our policy objectives. There are five ways the Bank is enabling the FinTech transformation. The first is widening access to central bank money to non-bank Payments Service Providers, known as PSPs. 3 As the internet revolutionised commerce, making trade faster and markets more competitive, payments technology lagged in many countries, although it is worth remembering that the UK has been a global leader on real-time retail payments. Faster Payments (FPS) was one of the earliest real-time retail systems introduced, in 2008. Now, new entrants and established players are seeking to provide payment services that are instantaneous, secure, reliable and accessible anytime from anywhere. 4 Retail consumers and firms are increasingly demanding payments completed in seconds, not hours or days. They expect payments to be seamless, reliable and cheap whether to recipients overseas or just up the street. And they expect to make payments without visits to a bank branch or even logging onto a desktop computer. Similarly, companies, financial intermediaries and governments want to process ever larger and more complex bulk payments covering multiple systems, countries and currencies. Central banks lie at the hearts of payment systems, giving households and firms the assurance that transactions have settled in the most secure form of payment: central bank money. To fulfil that role, our payments infrastructure needs to remain fit for purpose: reliable, resilient and robust. But we must also be responsive to changing payments demands.