海外之声丨BIS总裁：为人民服务的央行数字货币
导读
如何设计和落实央行数字货币（CBDCs），以确保“无银行账户”的人能够获得基本的金融服务？
根据世界银行的数据，全世界有17亿成年人没有银行账户。由于无法获得正规金融部门的服务，他们被迫求助于其他方式，往往要付出巨大的代价或风险。
迄今为止，中央银行在很大程度上通过提供我们目前拥有的最具包容性的货币形式来满足这一需求，即现金。然而，只使用现金使无银行账户的人处于正规金融体系之外，没有随时获得金融服务所需的数据和交易记录。这可能使小企业更难建立储蓄和获得信贷。
中央银行已经通过采用快速支付系统来协调零售支付的进一步改善，而央行数字货币则是这一连续过程的自然延伸。快速支付系统和央行数字货币都可以刺激竞争性供应商提供新的服务，降低成本，并最终扩大使用范围。央行数字货币的另一个好处是，就其本质而言，它们将包含中央银行货币的独特优势——安全性、最终性、流动性和完整性。
央行数字货币可以绕过许多围绕支付系统出现的既得商业利益，这些利益导致了效率低下和用户的成本。它们还可以通过消除其他形式的数字货币所固有的信贷和流动性风险来降低成本。央行数字货币有可能升级和连接支付系统——包括国内和跨境的支付系统。
为了实现这些好处，任何央行数字货币的推出都必须伴随着政策改革和保障措施，以解决潜在的困难和风险，如低水平的金融和数字知识，以及包括网络安全在内的运营挑战。政策改革还应该防止“金融脱媒”：即资金大量存在央行数字货币钱包中，而不是作为商业银行的存款，使其无法用于贷款（如抵押贷款）和其他生产目的的危险。
中央银行还应该考虑设计央行数字货币，以实现公平竞争。让人们能够控制他们的交易数据，并能够与更多的金融服务提供商分享数据。对数据隐私日益增长的担忧可以通过在央行数字货币的结构中硬性规定个人数据保护来解决。
探索建立央行数字货币的中央银行将有许多设计选择，以平衡隐私保护和透明度，并确保金融包容性和金融完整性。他们将需要考虑是让消费者直接使用，还是采用纯粹的中介模式，通过银行或非银行金融服务提供商提供央行数字货币数字钱包。
中央银行家和其他公共部门的代表有责任确保金融系统的包容性、开放性、竞争性，并对所有群体的需求和利益做出反应。
作者 | Agustin Carstens，BIS总裁
英文原文如下：
CBDCs for the People
Op-ed by Mr Agustín Carstens, General Manager of the BIS, and H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, published by Project Syndicate, 18 April 2022.
THE HAGUE and BASEL – Central banks around the world are considering whether to issue their own digital currencies. While financial inclusion is often cited as a key motivation, this is not automatic. Precisely how can central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) be designed and implemented to ensure that "unbanked" people have access to essential financial services?
According to the World Bank, 1.7 billion adults worldwide are unbanked. With no access to services from the formal financial sector, they are forced to resort to alternatives, often at significant cost or risk. Such financial exclusion entrenches poverty, limits opportunity and prevents people from protecting themselves against hardship. It stifles hope for a better future.
Financial inclusion starts, but does not end, with the ability to make and receive payments. People need a fast, secure, and cheap way to transfer money. To date, central banks have largely met this need by providing the most inclusive form of money we currently have: cash. However, using cash exclusively leaves the unbanked outside the formal financial system and without the data and transaction trail needed to readily access financial services. This can make it much more difficult for small businesses to build savings and gain access to credit.
But due to the widespread adoption of digital and mobile technologies, the payments landscape is changing. Cash transactions are declining, and there is a shift toward digital activity – a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, when online transactions surged. Given these broad developments, it is imperative that we work to close the widening digital divide. Central banks and policymakers now have an opportunity to explore reforms, including the issuance of digital central bank money for all.
CDBCs could offer an opportunity to overcome some barriers facing the unbanked. Traditional services have potentially prohibitive costs and requirements such as transaction fees, minimum account balances, or formal proof of identification. Additional obstacles include the low level of trust in digital payments and the lack of smartphones among some groups.
While CBDCs are not the only way to overcome these barriers, they could be part of the inclusion toolkit. Central banks are already coordinating further improvements to retail payments by adopting fast payment systems, and CBDCs represent a natural extension of this continuum. Both fast payment systems and CBDCs can spur competing providers to offer new services, lower costs, and, ultimately, broaden access. A further benefit of CBDCs is that, by their very nature, they will incorporate the unique advantages of central-bank money – safety, finality, liquidity, and integrity.
CBDCs could bypass many of the vested commercial interests that have cropped up around payment systems and contributed to inefficiencies and costs for users. They could also lower costs by removing the credit and liquidity risks inherent in other forms of digital money. A CBDC has the potential to upgrade and connect payment systems – both domestically and across borders. It could spur countries with limited financial infrastructure to leapfrog directly to a CBDC arrangement, creating an opportunity to connect to an inclusive, safe, and efficient payments system.
There are also benefits for social policies. For example, governments could use CBDCs to channel financial support to low-income households, which would deepen longer-term inclusion and act as another gateway to other financial services.
To realize these benefits, any CBDC rollout must be accompanied by policy reforms and safeguards to address potential difficulties and risks, such as low levels of financial and digital literacy, and operational challenges, including cybersecurity. Policy reforms also should prevent disintermediation: the danger that money will be held in large amounts in CBDC wallets, rather than as deposits in commercial banks, making it unavailable for lending (such as mortgages) and other productive purposes.
Central banks also should consider designing CBDCs to level the playing field. Give people control over their transaction data and the ability to share it with a wider set of financial service providers. Growing concerns aboutdata privacy could be addressed by hardwiring personal data protections into the structure of a CBDC.
Central banks exploring CBDCs will have many design choices to make to balance privacy protection and transparency, and to ensure both financial inclusion and financial integrity. They will need to consider whether to grant direct access to consumers or to use a purely intermediated model that offers CBDC digital wallets through banks or nonbank financial service providers. More dialogue, research, and trials will be needed to show how CBDCs can best become engines of financial inclusion.
Central bankers and other public-sector representatives have a duty to ensure the financial system is inclusive, open, competitive, and responsive to the needs and interests of all groups. If designed properly, CBDCs hold great promise to help support a digital financial system that works for everyone.
H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands is the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development. Agustín Carstens is General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements.
编译：李淼
本文监制：董熙君
版面编辑 刘嘉璐
责任编辑 蒋旭、李锦璇
总监制 朱霜霜
点击查看近期热文
欢迎加入群聊
为了增进与粉丝们的互动，IMI财经观察建立了微信交流群，欢迎大家参与。
入群方法：加群主为微信好友（微信号：imi605）,添加时备注个人姓名（实名认证）、单位、职务等信息，经群主审核后，即可被拉进群。
欢迎读者朋友多多留言与我们交流互动，留言可换奖品：每月累积留言点赞数最多的读者将得到我们寄送的最新研究成果一份。
关于我们
中国人民大学国际货币研究所（IMI）成立于2009年12月20日，是专注于货币金融理论、政策与战略研究的非营利性学术研究机构和新型专业智库。研究所聘请了来自国内外科研院所、政府部门或金融机构的90余位著名专家学者担任顾问委员、学术委员和国际委员，80余位中青年专家担任研究员。
研究所长期聚焦国际金融、货币银行、宏观经济、金融监管、金融科技、地方金融等领域，定期举办国际货币论坛、货币金融（青年）圆桌会议、大金融思想沙龙、麦金农大讲坛、陶湘国际金融讲堂、IMF经济展望报告发布会、金融科技公开课等高层次系列论坛或讲座，形成了《人民币国际化报告》《天府金融指数报告》《金融机构国际化报告》《中国财富管理能力评价报告》《宏观经济月度分析报告》等一大批具有重要理论和政策影响力的学术成果。
2018年，研究所荣获中国人民大学优秀院属研究机构奖，在182家参评机构中排名第一；在《智库大数据报告（2018）》中获评A等级，在参评的1065个中国智库中排名前5%。2019年，入选智库头条号指数（前50名），成为第一象限28家智库之一。
国际货币网：http://www.imi.ruc.edu.cn
微信号：IMI财经观察
（点击识别下方二维码关注我们）
理事单位申请、
学术研究和会议合作
联系方式:
只分享最有价值的财经视点
We only share the most valuable financial insights.