In response to global developments of central bank digital currencies (CBDC), France’s central bank is getting reorganized, said François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de resolution (ACPR), in a recent speech.
As such, the current Payments and Market Infrastructures Oversight Directorate will become the Infrastructure, Innovation and Payments Directorate (DIIP), and its scope will be extended to cover all payment innovations, infrastructures and central bank digital currency. With the help of the central bank’s Lab, the DIIP will work with industry innovators from the private sector.
“We want to start running experiments rapidly and will launch a call for projects before the end of the first quarter of 2020. We are particularly keen to take part in experiments to integrate a ‘wholesale’ CBDC into innovative procedures for exchanging and settling tokenized financial assets. Galhau also nodded to recent remarks by ECB chief Christine Lagarde, saying that the central bank would contribute to an “e-euro” as one of its next focuses.