Celent has long promoted the need for banks to modernise their payment systems. In a prior report, we highlighted that central banks now face many of the same challenges and so also need to modernise. From driving innovation, they are increasingly a barrier.

But central banks face another challenge to which they must respond: the changing face of money itself. As new forms of money emerge—and they will continue to emerge—central banks need to assess how able they are to embrace and enable them.

There are many aspects that will need to be considered, from policy to scope of role the central bank play, all of which will differ by country, and outside the scope of this report. Increasingly though, the central banks will need to engage with these novel forms of money if only for oversight and risk. The proliferation of options means that if they don't, they may simply be bypassed. This paper then sets out some key items for central banks to remember as they consider their roles and provides some key tenets that they need to remember when looking at how to include them, whether theirs or third parties, into their payment stack.