now summarized in a specific chapter of this law. 3 ) foreign direct investments and the albanian financial system foreign direct investments have been assessed as very important for developing countries, since they have a positive impact on the macroeconomic, technological and institutional performance of recipient countries. the wide experience over the last decades indicates that the presence of the financial fdis improves the soundness of the domestic financial system, through a better management of portfolio risk and a more efficient allocation of credit funds. in addition, the technological innovations deriving from the fdi inflows affect the enhancement of the banking system competition and efficiency, through the increase in the variety of products and services provided. despite these positive effects, the presence of foreign banks in the country instigates improvements in the institutional framework, by pushing the application of international accounting, reporting and supervision standards, which does not only help the commercial banks ’ decision - making process but also the central bank ’ s. therefore, the fdis are expected not only to promote the production activity in the country, but also to have a direct and indirect impact on the albanian financial system. foreign production companies will directly need financial transfers and services ( channel payrolls through the atms, pos ), which will be executed through the domestic financial system. the international companies investing in the country will make use of commercial banks ’ funding sources in order to prevent exchange rate and interest rate risk. there have been many property - related developments in the albanian banking system. since its establishment, the domination of state - owned banks has been reducing and today, foreign commercial banks ’ assets account for over 90 per cent of the banking system. the increase in the number of foreign banks in the system has been also favoured by the fact that such investments have not been penalized in albania ; the requirements for establishing a bank are similar for both domestic and foreign - owned banks. the current ownership is diverse ; there are foreign investors from austria, italy, greece, usa, turkey, germany, bulgaria, malaysia and some arab countries. greek banks have been present in the market since 1996 ; the german and italian investment has been present for quite a long time as well, while the latter has grown substantially and has become one of the market ’ s key actors. austrian investments may be considered as the most dominant ones. their ownership has resulted from the acquisition of the largest domestic state - owned bank. the long presence of foreign banks in the albanian banking system has influenced the establishment of a stable banking system and its

cards or bank transfers ). however, as the experience with contactless and mobile payments shows, innovation in payments will continue as new technologies and business models develop. the ability to transact in cash, of course, remains very important to a substantial part of the population and often to the most vulnerable. and cash is clearly an important store of value for many in times of stress [ 3 ]. the bank of england has been very clear that it will continue to issue cash as long as there is any demand for it [ 4 ]. but the recent trend away from publically - issued, bank of england, physical money and towards electronic money issued by private sector banks is very clear. and we should expect that trend to continue for a number of reasons. first, and most obviously, what i have called the digitalisation of everyday life will continue. the growth of internet commerce or use of banking and payments apps, for example is forecast to grow / unlikely to stop. second, there are further developments in train within existing payment systems, infrastructure and regulatory frameworks. these include pay. uk ’ s development of the new payments architecture [ 5 ]. the bank of england is well advanced in the build and implementation of a new central bank real time payment system ( rtgs ), the central rail of the current uk payments infrastructure. this renewal programme will increase resilience and access, and offer wider interoperability, improved user functionality and strengthened end - toend risk management of the uk ’ s high value payment system. as announced this morning, the government and regulators [ 6 ] will expand the open banking framework through making improvements on api performance, improving the provision of information sharing to third party providers and working towards additional functionalities, such as variable recurring payments. third, and looking a little further into the future, over the last decade a set of newer technologies have emerged which may have the potential for a further transformation in payments. i am referring here to technologies that have been pioneered and refined in the crypto world, such as tokenisation, encryption, distribution, atomic settlement and smart contracts. these developments have been much hyped of course, and one could not say it was a certain bet that they will be as transformative as some have claimed. but some have already begun to find their way into conventional finance [ 7 ] and there is a great deal of experimentation and development going on, both in the crypto world and in conventional finance. they offer the prospect of what is loosely