Do you know how banking and money will look like in the new digital age? This book collects the voices of leading scholars, entrepreneurs, policy makers and consultants who, through their expertise and keen analytical skills, are best positioned to picture from various angles the ongoing technological revolution in banking and finance. You will learn how lending and borrowing can exist without banks; how new forms of money can compete to better serve different society needs; how new technologies are banking the unbanked communities in the poorest parts of the world, and how ideas and small projects can be financed by the crowds without the need to rely upon banks. You will learn how, in the new digital age, we will interact with new self-organised and autonomous companies that operate without any human involvement, based on a set of programmed and incorruptible rules. You will learn that new business models will emerge thanks to technology-enabled platforms, upon which one can build new forms of non-hierarchical cooperation between strangers. And you will also learn that new forms of risks and threats are emerging that will destabilise our systems and jeopardise the stability of our financial order.

In coming to terms with the still smoldering financial crisis, little attention has been paid to the flaws within our monetary system and how these flaws lie at the root of the crisis. This book provides an introduction and critical assessment of the current monetary system. It begins with an up to date account of the workings of today’s system of state-backed ‘bankmoney’, illustrating the various forms and issuers of money, and discussing money theory and fallacy past and present. It also looks at related economic challenges such as inflation and deflation, asset inflation and bubble building that lead to market instability and examines the ineffectual monetary policies and primary credit markets that are failing to reach some sort of self-limiting equilibrium. In order to fix our financial system, we first need to understand its limitations and the flaws in current monetary and regulatory policy and then correct them. The concluding part of this book is dedicated to the latter, advocating a move towards the sovereign monetary prerogatives of issuing the entire stock of official money and benefitting from the gain thereof (seigniorage). The author argues that these functions should be made the sole responsibility of independent and impartial central banks with full control over the stock of money (not the uses of money) on the basis of a legal mandate that would be more detailed than is the case today. This includes a thorough separation of monetary and fiscal powers, and of both from banking and wider financing functions. This book provides a welcome addition to the banking literature, guiding readers through the inner workings of our monetary and regulatory environments and proposing a new way forward that will better protect our economy from financial instability and crisis.

Winner of best book by a foreign author (2019) at the Business Book of the Year Award organised by PwC Russia The future of banking is already here — are you ready? Bank 4.0 explores the radical transformation already taking place in banking, and follows it to its logical conclusion. What will banking look like in 30 years? 50 years? The world’s best banks have been forced to adapt to changing consumer behaviors; regulators are rethinking friction, licensing and regulation; Fintech start-ups and tech giants are redefining how banking fits in the daily life of consumers. To survive, banks are having to develop new capabilities, new jobs and new skills. The future of banking is not just about new thinking around value stores, payment and credit utility — it's embedded in voice-based smart assistants like Alexa and Siri and soon smart glasses which will guide you on daily spending and money decisions. The coming Bank 4.0 era is one where either your bank is embedded in your world via tech, or it no longer exists. In this final volume in Brett King's BANK series, we explore the future of banks amidst the evolution of technology and discover a revolution already at work. From re-engineered banking systems, to selfie-pay and self-driving cars, Bank 4.0 proves that we're not on Wall Street anymore. Bank 4.0 will help you: Understand the historical precedents that flag a fundamental rethinking in banking Discover low-friction, technology experiences that undermine the products we sell today Think through the evolution of identity, value and assets as cash and cards become obsolete Learn how Fintech and tech "disruptors" are using behaviour, psychology and technology to reshape the economics of banking Examine the ways in which blockchain, A.I., augmented reality and other leading-edge tech are the real building blocks of the future of banking systems If you look at individual technologies or startups disrupting the space, you might miss the biggest signposts to the future and you might also miss that most of we've learned about banking the last 700 years just isn't useful. When the biggest bank in the world isn't any of the names you'd expect, when branch networks are a burden not an asset, and when advice is the domain of Artificial Intelligence, we may very well have to start from scratch. Bank 4.0 takes you to a world where banking will be instant, smart and ubiquitous, and where you'll have to adapt faster than ever before just to survive. Welcome to the future.

This Open Access book from the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy explains how money creation and banking works, describes the main problems of the current monetary and financial system and discusses several reform options. This book systematically evaluates proposals for fundamental monetary reform, including ideas to separate money and credit by breaking up banks, introducing a central bank digital currency, and introducing public payment banks. By drawing on these plans, the authors suggest several concrete reforms to the current banking system with the aim to ensure that the monetary system remains stable, contributes to the Dutch economy, fairly distributes benefits, costs and risks, and enjoys public legitimacy. This systematic approach, and the accessible way in which the book is written, allows specialized and non-specialised readers to understand the intricacies of money, banking, monetary reform and financial innovation, far beyond the Dutch context [Resumen de la editorial]

How the contentious world of nineteenth-century banking shaped the United States. Pieces of paper that claimed to be good for two dollars upon redemption at a distant bank. Foreign coins that fluctuated in value from town to town. Stock certificates issued by turnpike or canal companies—worth something . . . or perhaps nothing. IOUs from farmers or tradesmen, passed around by people who could not know the person who first issued them. Money and banking in antebellum America offered a glaring example of free-market capitalism run amok—unregulated, exuberant, and heading pell-mell toward the next “panic” of burst bubbles and hard times. In Other People’s Money, Sharon Ann Murphy explains how banking and money worked before the federal government, spurred by the chaos of the Civil War, created the national system of US paper currency. Murphy traces the evolution of banking in America from the founding of the nation, when politicians debated the constitutionality of chartering a national bank, to Andrew Jackson’s role in the Bank War of the early 1830s, to the problems of financing a large-scale war. She reveals how, ultimately, the monetary and banking structures that emerged from the Civil War also provided the basis for our modern financial system, from its formation under the Federal Reserve in 1913 to the present. Touching on the significant role that numerous historical figures played in shaping American banking—including Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Louis Brandeis—Other People’s Money is an engaging guide to the heated political fights that surrounded banking in early America as well as to the economic causes and consequences of the financial system that emerged from the turmoil. By helping readers understand the financial history of this period and the way banking shaped the society in which ordinary Americans lived and worked, this book broadens and deepens our knowledge of the Early American Republic.

Taking financial risks is an essential part of what banks do, but there’s no clear sense of what constitutes responsible risk. Taking legal risks seems to have become part of what banks do as well. Since the financial crisis, Congress has passed copious amounts of legislation aimed at curbing banks’ risky behavior. Lawsuits against large banks have cost them billions. Yet bad behavior continues to plague the industry. Why isn’t there more change? In Better Bankers, Better Banks, Claire A. Hill and Richard W. Painter look back at the history of banking and show how the current culture of bad behavior—dramatized by the corrupt, cocaine-snorting bankers of The Wolf of Wall Street—came to be. In the early 1980s, banks went from partnerships whose partners had personal liability to corporations whose managers had no such liability and could take risks with other people’s money. A major reason bankers remain resistant to change, Hill and Painter argue, is that while banks have been faced with large fines, penalties, and legal fees—which have exceeded one hundred billion dollars since the onset of the crisis—the banks (which really means the banks’shareholders) have paid them, not the bankers themselves. The problem also extends well beyond the pursuit of profit to the issue of how success is defined within the banking industry, where highly paid bankers clamor for status and clients may regard as inevitable bankers who prioritize their own self-interest. While many solutions have been proposed, Hill and Painter show that a successful transformation of banker behavior must begin with the bankers themselves. Bankers must be personally liable from their own assets for some portion of the bank’s losses from excessive risk-taking and illegal behavior. This would instill a culture that discourages such behavior and in turn influence the sorts of behavior society celebrates or condemns. Despite many sensible proposals seeking to reign in excessive risk-taking, the continuing trajectory of scandals suggests that we’re far from ready to avert the next crisis. Better Bankers, Better Banks is a refreshing call for bankers to return to the idea that theirs is a noble profession.

This book examines the experiences and good practices of ACLEDA Bank, Cambodia. Applicable to banks and microfinance institutions around the globe, it includes materials for classroom instruction on organizational development, financial sector development, the role of government and investors in supporting the financial market, and the benefits to customers. Following on the previous publication When There Was No Money, which tells the ACLEDA story by tracing its history and various stages of organizational development in the financial sector as it evolved in Cambodia from 1991 to 2004, this book examines the 2nd decade in the bank’s history, including its expansion to Lao PDR and Myanmar, and the launch of subsidiaries, such as ACLEDA Securities and the ACLEDA Institute of Business. Adopting a documentary approach, the book presents case studies supported by current economic and financial literature, as well as stories from a wide range of interviews with the board, management, staff, customers, competitors and regulators. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for financial institutions, investors, researchers and students interested in financial inclusion, financial sector development, good governance of financial institutions, microfinance, aid effectiveness, post-conflict organizational development, and Cambodia.

After over a decade of Bitcoin, which has now moved beyond lore and hype into an increasingly robust star in the firmament of global assets, a new and more important question has arisen. What happens beyond Bitcoin? The answer is decentralised finance - 'DeFi'. Tech and finance experts Steven Boykey Sidley and Simon Dingle argue that DeFi - which enables all manner of financial transactions to take place directly, person to person, without the involvement of financial institutions - will redesign the cogs and wheels in the engines of trust, and make the remarkable rise of Bitcoin look quaint by comparison. It will disrupt and displace fine and respectable companies, if not entire industries. Sidley and Dingle explain how DeFi works, introduce the organisations and individuals that comprise the new industry, and identify the likely winners and losers in the coming revolution.

This paper marks the launch of a new IMF series, Fintech Notes. Building on years of IMF staff work, it will explore pressing topics in the digital economy and be issued periodically. The series will carry work by IMF staff and will seek to provide insight into the intersection of technology and the global economy. The Rise of Digital Money analyses how technology companies are stepping up competition to large banks and credit card companies. Digital forms of money are increasingly in the wallets of consumers as well as in the minds of policymakers. Cash and bank deposits are battling with so-called e-money, electronically stored monetary value denominated in, and pegged to, a currency like the euro or the dollar. This paper identifies the benefits and risks and highlights regulatory issues that are likely to emerge with a broader adoption of stablecoins. The paper also highlights the risks associated with e-money: potential creation of new monopolies; threats to weaker currencies; concerns about consumer protection and financial stability; and the risk of fostering illegal activities, among others.

This text provides a modern statement of the theory and practice of domestic and international banking and finance. Today, banks are no longer limited to retail deposit-taking and lending operations; they engage in wholesale banking activities, off-balance sheet business, and activities beyond domestic markets. The principles of all these types of bank services are lucidly discussed. Separate chapters provide general background on payments systems, Eurocurrency markets, bank safety and depositor protection. The authors' conception is unique in providing a comparative study in a geographical sense (they deal with banking in the U.S., Britain, and Australia) and in an institutional sense, tracing parallels between operations of banks and other financial institutions, particularly insurance companies. With the growing impact of financial innovations and the internationalization of financial markets, Domestic and International Banking is the innovative text needed for courses on monetary and banking policy and on capital markets and financial institutions. Mervyn K. Lewis is Midland Bank Professor of Money and Banking at the University of Nottingham, and Kevin T. Davis is Professor of Finance at the University of Melbourne.