The head of the Bank of International Settlements’ innovation hubs has urgently called on central banks to begin designing central bank digital currencies.

Speaking in Slovenia on September 10, Benoît Cœuré said the time has now passed for central banks to “get going” as stablecoins, bigtechs and crypto firms threatened to disrupt the payments landscape.

“We should roll up our sleeves and accelerate our work on the nitty-gritty of CBDC design,” he said. “CBDCs will take years to be rolled out