then, today, most of the money we have is just debit balances, data points with banks. while there actually is no physical form, there is value, which we denominate in our currency. so, what is really the true nature of money? is it the physical manifestation in the form of physical coins of gold and silver, dinar or dirham, or is it more than this? in today's digital world, it is obvious we can have money without any physical form. while we no longer require a physical form, what we do require is a system to record these debits, credits and transfers of money, which, essentially, is the financial system. 4 / 6 bis - central bankers'speeches from this perspective, some are of the view that money is transferable credit and another form of social technology to measure, attach value, organise and facilitate social and economic exchanges. this runs counter to much of contemporary economic thinking, which has its roots in money originating as a commodity that overcame barter trade. this latter thinking also underpins much of conventional or traditional economic theory that separates financial and real economics. at its extreme, neo - classical economics asserts that the financial system doesn't matter. money is irrelevant. it gives one to think of the shariah perspective ;'money'is not a commodity to be used to generate surplus value or profit in and of itself. for profits to be justifiable, a person must either bear ownership or investment risk, be liable to perform a duty or provide a service3. it is thus understood that money and profit generation must be rooted in real economic activities. but again, we circle to another conundrum : that if the financial system is irrelevant to the real economy, how do we tie'money'to the real economy, like we must do for islamic finance? ladies and gentlemen, i am posing a lot of questions. to me, these are relevant questions and areas of research to pursue to truly understand the real economic and financial system. in islamic finance and islamic economics, we have the alternative to pursue these based on fundamental islamic perspectives and move away from traditional economic thinking. we can do away with the concept of the economic man, the greedy, selfserving superhuman who strives to meet his unlimited wants in an environment of resource scarcity. instead, we should replace this with guidance : a nobleman, fairly moderate, charitable, who can be satisfied at some point, operating in a

reach and therefore can support all countries included those that do not have other ways to tap into global knowledge ; second it has the power to gather all the key players around the table : ministries of finance, prudential supervisory bodies, aml authorities, ministries of domestic affairs and data protection authorities. one might ask whether it is wise, for the international community to embark on such an undertaking now. my answer is definitely yes. in fact, ensuring good interoperability of business environments is a necessary condition for any kind of approach to crossborder payments, whether based on traditional or new technologies, such as distributed ledger technology and central bank currency ( dlt and cbdc ). * * * 3 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches let me conclude. progress in payment systems rests upon mutual trust and multilateral cooperation, both enabling conditions for advancing the g20 roadmap. central bank cooperation has a key role to play in developing payments infrastructures ; the involvement of governments and private sector stakeholders is also essential to create a sound regulatory and market environment. if we take a holistic approach and focus our efforts on what is actually achievable, the payments sector will be even more capable of improving the prosperity of our economies while reducing inequality. 1 cipollone p. ( 2021 ), the italian g20 presidency and the cross - border payments agenda, speech at the cpmi conference on'pushing the frontiers of payments ', 19 march 2021. 2 mckinsey ( 2022 ), the 2022 mckinsey global payments report. 3 carstens a. ( 2020 ), shaping the future of payments, bis quarterly review, march 2020 ; visco i. ( 2021 ), opening remarks at the webinar " enhancing digital and global infrastructures in cross - border payments ", organized on 27 - 28 september by the bank of italy during the italian g20 presidency ; cipollone p. ( 2022 ), keynote speech at the conference on digital platforms and global law, organized on 29 april 2022 by unidroit in collaboration with roma tre university and the european law institute ( eli ) in rome. 4 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches