The International Monetary Fund has published an IMF Fintech Note setting out how Fragile and Conflict-Affected States can strengthen the resilience of their payment ecosystems to maintain payment continuity through conflict, natural disasters, cyber incidents, and infrastructure failures, and how these lessons can inform central bank digital currency (CBDC) design. The Note introduces a framework to assess vulnerabilities across the payment ecosystem and examines how CBDC and other digital innovations could replicate resilience features such as offline functionality, redundancy, and interoperability. The framework breaks payment ecosystems into five interconnected layers (connectivity infrastructure, payment infrastructure, intermediaries, payment solutions, and user access) and highlights strategies grouped under redundancy and scalability, distributed infrastructure and decentralization, user-centric accessibility and awareness, operational and cybersecurity, and regulatory and legal resilience. Case studies from Ukraine, West Bank and Gaza, Haiti, the Central African Economic and Monetary Community region, Tuvalu, Sudan, and Yemen illustrate measures such as multisite architectures for systemically important payment infrastructure, mandated connectivity redundancy for PSPs, the use of satellite connectivity where telecom networks fail, rapid cloud migration enabled by emergency regulatory decisions, and foreign-hosted e-voucher platforms for humanitarian payments. The Note also covers user-facing enablers such as digital identification, operational responses to heightened cyber and scam risks through coordinated incident response and threat sharing, and the roles and limitations of cash and digital money options including stablecoins and crypto assets. On CBDC, the Note outlines design considerations that could support resilience, including offline-capable payment solutions, flexible front ends, programmability for crisis disbursements, and integration with national incident response arrangements, while noting that resilience outcomes depend on country circumstances. It also states that the Note is technical in nature and does not endorse or reject CBDC as a policy option.
International Monetary Fund 2025-11-13
International Monetary Fund publishes Fintech Note on payment resilience in fragile and conflict-affected states with lessons for CBDC design
The International Monetary Fund's IMF Fintech Note outlines strategies to enhance payment ecosystem resilience in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States, impacting central bank digital currency (CBDC) design. It presents a framework for assessing vulnerabilities across five ecosystem layers and explores digital innovations like offline functionality and interoperability. Case studies highlight measures such as multisite architectures and satellite connectivity, with CBDC considerations including offline solutions and crisis disbursement programmability.