Mobile money is playing a critical role in promoting financial inclusion in developing countries. Simultaneously, continued price declines are placing entry-level smartphones within reach of a rapidly increasing fraction of the global population. In addition, many of the unbanked live in urban...

Over millennia, mankind has used hard cash in various forms ranging from shells to gold coins and paper. More recently, cash has become unpopular in political circles, as it effectively restricts states’ power to tax (explicitly or via negative interest rates) or to survey and potentially...

Digital currencies have attracted strong interest in recent years and have the potential to become widely adopted for use in making payments. Public authorities and central banks around the world are closely monitoring developments in digital currencies and studying their implications for the...