a new kind of money for the general public? we have thus been able to establish that cash is disappearing at a rapid rate, while, at the same time, new electronic ‘ currencies ’, issued by other players than central banks, are appearing. in general, technological developments are proceeding rapidly and digitalisation is placing higher demands on payment services that are available round the clock. in this environment, it is natural to ask whether central banks should offer the general public a secure electronic alternative that could work in approximately the same way as cash. it is for this reason and others that we, at the riksbank, have opened an analysis of the possibilities for issuing a so - called e - krona. 28 the analysis is founded in the question of which problems may arise if cash were to disappear. we can note that this means that banks are continuing to have access to central bank money, while the general public in sweden is losing the access to central bank money it has had since the 17th century. 29 but is this a problem? has there been a weakening of the arguments that have existed for providing the general public with an asset and a means of payment that is completely free from risk? is it a fact that the swedish people generally no longer have a need for central bank money? or is it rather that they do not want physical banknotes and coins? if this second statement is correct, i see it as the riksbank's obligation to investigate the possibilities of issuing an e - krona that can fulfil approximately the same role as cash previously did. if the riksbank does not offer an electronic alternative, this also means, in practice, that all of our payments will have to go through banks or other financial institutions. since the payment market has the imperfections it does, as i have described earlier, it is likely that monopoly situations, inefficient for the economy as a whole, would arise if the private market was allowed to act freely with no central government involvement. this problem could possibly be managed with the use of regulations, but it can be difficult to effectively regulate a monopoly. as long as a public alternative exists, this puts certain natural restrictions on the private players. historically, cash has been this alternative. there are various possibilities for creating a technical platform for the e - krona. one possibility is to connect it to the existing infrastructure. another alternative could be to develop a new system that could act as backup for other payment systems.

of these questions are likely to be no. policy actions are needed as i have tried to illustrate so far, financial integration gives rise to several challenges related to the supervision of cross - border banks. most importantly, i have argued that the present supervisory arrangements are not designed to prevent the cross - border externalities that financial crises may result in. this, of course, is a growing problem in an integrated world. furthermore, i have argued that there are deficiencies in how the supervision of internationally active banks works in practice, which can partly be explained by limitations in legislation and partly by supervisors not being sufficiently coordinated. in my opinion all this gives us good reasons to reflect on how to take actions for revising the present regulatory frameworks. we need to find ways for countries to cooperate closely and establish mechanisms for coordination and conflict resolution. motives for a coordinated financial supervision most of what i have said so far is probably pretty uncontroversial both in terms of the analysis of the challenges of integration and of the need for action. however, it may be more difficult to reach agreement on how to move forward. a number of alternative solutions have been brought into the debate. for example, proposals such as prohibiting foreign branches from doing business domestically or extending home - country responsibility have been discussed. my take on this, as i said in the beginning, is instead to gradually move towards the creation of a common international body with a mandate to conduct supervision of banks with substantial cross - border activities. the simple rationale is that the creation of such a body is the only way to fully manage the conflicting national interests. also, such a body would have several other benefits. a single authority supervising cross - border banking groups instead of several would most certainly increase the comprehensiveness and the effectiveness of the supervision. for the firms subject to supervision, it could mean that the regulatory burden would eventually be reduced considerably. in a european context, the idea of a european organisation for financial supervision ( eofs ) may at a first glance seem overly idealistic, and to be honest, in some respects it is. one can argue that it would be virtually impossible to make countries give up parts of their sovereignty to a supranational authority. however, looking at this from a european perspective, there is hope. within the european union there is already a framework for supervisory and regulatory cooperation, based on the common legislative process in the form of eec - directives and regulations. moreover some institutional arrangements for supervisory cooperation are