IMF: Platform for X-Border Payments, Crypto Regs

International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff are reportedly advocating for a global platform for cross-border payments and for cryptocurrency regulations.

These calls to action were published in the September issues of the IMF’s quarterly magazine, “Finance and development“, according to a Thursday (September 1) report from CoinDesk.

Specifically, Tobias Adrianfinancial advisor and director of the monetary and capital markets department at the IMF, said he wants the organization to build a platform that will accept payments in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and issue tokens against them to reduce the cost of international transfers, per the report.

On the subject of crypto regulation, Aditya Naraindeputy director of the monetary and capital markets department at the IMF, wrote that the crypto ecosystem should be regulated in a coordinated, global response rather than by different national frameworks, according to the report.

PYMNTS research has found that half of businesses use or want to use blockchain and cryptocurrency for cross-border payments.

Read more: 37% of companies use Blockchain, Crypto for cross-border payments

37 percent of businesses said they currently use blockchain and cryptocurrencies for cross-border transactions, and another 13 percent said they want to, according to “Blockchain Payments Tracker,” a PYMNTS and Algorand collaboration.

High-friction transactions such as cross-border payments could offer incentive for more companies to take a serious look at the development of blockchain payments, the research found.

The Digital Dollar Project (DDP) announced on Wednesday (August 31) that it will launch a technical sandbox project in October to explore the practical aspects of implementing a US CBDC, initially focusing on cross-border payments.

See more: Digital Dollar Project’s sandbox to study CBDC X-Border Payments

“The launch of our technical sandbox program marks the next step in our efforts to bring together the private and public sectors in the exploration of a central bank digital currency in the United States,” said Jennifer Lassiter, executive director of the Digital Dollar Project, in a press release.

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