Diversity in who we speak to in financial markets has even more direct benefits. It improves our understanding of what is driving markets, what people expect from future policy and the potential impacts of different decisions. And that is critical – because financial markets are global, complex and interconnected. A failure to understand those diverse components heightens the chances of making analytical, and hence policy, mistakes. Speaking to only one subset of banks, for example, could mean policy calibrations have unintended consequences for different market participants. Only looking at established financial assets risks ignoring the impact of innovation. And speaking only to contacts of similar backgrounds could mean missing different perspectives 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  on potential risks to consensus views. Having that breadth of diverse perspectives allows us to act more quickly and decisively in a crisis too. In March last year, financial market stress caused by COVID-19 across the world led to investors looking for safe haven assets and cash. The conversations we had with market participants like you during this period were essential to building a picture of what was happening across a wide range of different markets, and assessing the steps we, and other public authorities, needed to take to maintain economic and financial stability. To take one example, the intelligence we gathered from you about the stress in the commercial paper market helped the Bank and HM Treasury to plan, design and launch the COVID Corporate Funding Facility in record time, and ensured it was priced appropriately.

they are instantaneous and more user-friendly) undergo (i) a decline of the use of cash in transactions, which puts into question the availability of central bank money for the public, and (ii) an increase of cashless payments which leads to a wider use of commercial bank money. This trend has apparently accelerated since the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis. • Besides, increased reliance on digital payment solutions also exposes how our European ecosystem has become critically dependent on non-European players (e.g. international card schemes and Big Techs), with little control over business continuity, technical and commercial decision-making, as well as data protection, usage and storage. • Meanwhile, the development of crypto-assets and of so-called “stablecoins” aims to create a new category of settlement assets. Stablecoins in particular may compete against both commercial and central bank money, even though they do not offer the same guarantees in terms of credit risk, liquidity, service continuity, and neutrality. • These trends at stake bring both benefits and risks, and we must consider them as a whole. We must acknowledge that there are inefficiencies in the current payment arrangements, in particular – but not only- in the cross-border context, and that some innovations will help address them, if we do not strongly commit to fix the roots of inefficiencies. • This leads me to my main argument: we in Europe face urgent and strategic choices on payments that will have implications for our financial sovereignty for decades to come.