The progressive harmonisation of Shariah interpretations, in this particular respect, can be viewed as an important driver towards greater acceptance and avoid possible confusion by the public. Malaysia had addressed the issue through a centralised SAC, which through collective wealth of experience and expertise of its members, its independence and its rigorous process of rule-making, has ensured the credibility of Shariah ruling on Islamic finance transactions. But at another level, facilitating the internationalisation of Islamic finance would involve a delicate balancing act in nurturing innovation and pushing for greater Shariah convergence, harmonization and acceptance. One option is to standardize contracts for mature and widely acceptable concepts and structures as it leads to consistency and efficiency and in some instances promote interjurisdiction transactions. Given that majority of Shariah interpretations are actually very similar, more attention needs to be given to translate these rulings that are commonly practised into documentation, products and services in a unified manner. However, this could only happen if there is common understanding on the issues or fatwas involved. To contribute towards this process, Bank Negara Malaysia has taken the initiative to enhance the transparency on juristic reasoning in Islamic finance through the publication of Shariah resolutions by the SAC. We have also been issuing a series of “Shariah Parameters” for several major Shariah contracts which are aimed at promoting consistent application of these contracts in Islamic finance. By leading these various efforts, we hope it can pave the way towards greater understanding and contributes towards international convergence on Shariah matters across jurisdictions.

Nevertheless, none of the current initiatives to update or replace existing wholesale payment systems are considering the adoption of DLT. The ECB and the BOJ, in their role as operators of important market infrastructures services, decided to conduct in-depth experiments to determine whether specific existing functionalities of their respective payment systems could run in a DLT environment. Findings in relation to efficiency show that, with regard to the specific aspects of RTGS services tested to date, a DLTbased solution could meet the performance needs of current large value payment systems. In conclusion, this joint effort of ECB and the BOJ has produced a thorough set of results that provide reasons to be optimistic with respect to the capabilities of DLT within payment systems. It is, however, important to bear in mind that this work has been conducted in a test environment; therefore, any assumptions regarding the capacity for DLT to be used in production should not be made from this report. Both, the Bank of England (2017) and Bank of Canada (Ho, 2017)) conclude that DLT is not yet mature enough for current adoption. Yet most central banks that are considering modernizing their core payment infrastructure stress the need to make new systems inter-operable with future DLT platforms. Looking beyond the immediate horizon, many industry participants see significant potential for DLT to increase efficiency and reduce reconciliation costs in securities clearing and settlement.