| Joachim Samuelsson (CEO, Crunchfish)

| Sunil Karkera (Product Director, Digital Payments IDFC First Bank)

In today’s digital world, consumers expect seamless omnichannel banking and payment experiences, including the ability to make transactions offline. However, enabling secure approaches to offline payments presents many technological challenges. We aim to address some of these challenges in Session #22 of the CBDC Broadcast, with guests Joachim Samuelsson (Crunchfish) and Sunil Karkera (IDFC First Bank) joining FNA to explore cutting-edge approaches to offline payments and how partnerships between fintechs and banks can deliver innovative solutions.

Our guests shared insights into making offline payment systems scalable for mass adoption as we learned about the development and integration of such systems at an enterprise scale. Together, we also discussed considerations around consumer education and merchant onboarding when it comes to launching advanced payment technology.

The session covered:

• The use-cases and stability of offline payments
• Techniques for encrypting data and verifying transactions securely offline
• The technology behind offline transactions with the Digital Cash SKD to which IDFC First bank has access
• Feedback from pilot users and QR code technology for payments

| John Velissarios, Accenture
| Raoul Herborg, Giesecke + Devrient

CBDC is a very particular product. An extremely successful rollout, with massive adoption, could affect financial stability as deposits could migrate to CBDCs. On the other hand, poor adoption could mean a reputational risk event for the central bank. Therefore, unlike most central bank products, it looks like CBDC design should be user-oriented, with consumers and merchants as the main users and commercial banks as distributors. This means that before CBDCs are rolled out, there has to be a design phase that studies under which design options the CBDC will be used will be convenient, as well as safe, reliable, and efficient.

Guests John Velissarios (Accenture/DEA/DDP) and Raoul Herborg (Giesecke + Devrient) joined FNA for session #9 of The CBDC Broadcast as we discussed how some design options could shape the rollout and adoption of CBDCs. The session played close attention to the particular balance CBDCs must achieve to be successful, that is, being effectively adopted without jeopardizing the stability of the financial system.

The session covered:

• How to achieve a digital version of cash to provide an instant and secure payment option for everyone, everywhere
• The obstacles in making CBDCs accessible to all groups of society and factors considered to ensure inclusivity during the design and pilot phases
• Whether central banks should develop global standards to ensure interoperability between jurisdictions
• CBDCs and offline payment capabilities
• Whether banked people with easy access to commercial bank money feel the need to hold and use a CBDC balance

| Larissa de Lima, Oliver Wyman Forum
| Erica Salinas, Amazon Web Services

In previous sessions of The CBDC Broadcast, we focused on the many motivations for rolling out a CBDC, from achieving higher financial inclusion and higher transactional efficiency to preserving monetary sovereignty by compensating for the declining use of cash and by countering the entrance of new private forms of digital currencies.

Session #8 of the CBDC Broadcast featured guests Larissa De Lima (Oliver Wyman Forum) and Erica Salinas (Amazon Web Services), who joined FNA to discuss their joint report: Retail Central Bank Digital Currency: From Vision to Design. The report sets a framework to support policymakers in evaluating the interdependencies between policy and technological choices and highlights the importance of ensuring CBDC motivations, design principles and policy decisions are properly aligned.

The session covered:

• The principles that influence CBDC design choices
• Key policy trade-offs when designing a CBDC
• What services a Central Bank may offer if it positions itself close to identify-based services
• The role the private sector plays in designing a CBDC
• How central banks can make CBDCs as attractive as possible without threatening financial stability
• The choices around ledger technologies for CBDCs
• The risks associated with the implementation of a CBDC system
• Whether a G7 bank is likely to introduce a CBDC in the next five years

| Francisco Rivadeneyra, Bank of Canada
| Mehregan Ameri, Bank of England

There are many motivations for rolling out a CBDC, from achieving higher financial inclusion and higher transactional efficiency to preserving monetary sovereignty by compensating for the declining use of cash, and by countering the entrance of new private forms of digital currencies.

Each country has a different set of features and objectives that influence a CBDC’s design, making the roll-out a tailored process.

In this fourth session of FNA’s CBDC Broadcast, we talk to Dr Francisco Rivadeneyra from the Bank of Canada and Mehregan Ameri from the Bank of England to gain an insight into CBDCs from a G7 perspective