As payment systems progress, many individuals in the financial technology sector believe that issuing central bank digital currencies is the next natural step.

Naveed Ihsanullah, vice-president of engineering research, Pietro Grassano, business solutions director for Europe, and Co-Pierre Georg, associate professor and director of the University of Cape Town Financial Innovation Hub and member of Algorand's economic advisory committee, joined Lewis McLellan on the OMFIF podcast.

In this podcast, the three experts shared their latest findings on CBDCs based on their 2022 report "Issuing Central Bank Digital Currency on Algorand". Included in the report are the benefits of CBDCs, designing an efficient CBDC and economic considerations when issuing CBDCs.

In this session, Lewis asked an essential question about privacy. Co-Pierre and Naveed responded that there needs to be an appropriate balance between KYC and protecting privacy as well as creating guidelines for KYC.

While it is the assumption that CBDCs intend to replace banks, the team do not foresee CBDCs being competitive with the commercial bank framework. Instead, CBDCs are "the lifeline for banks so that they're competitive with tech companies as they become more prominent," Co-Pierre.

Listen to the full podcast using this link: https://lnkd.in/ezG7bbWj