Digital Currencies Academy

Digital payments are transforming our monetary and financial systems. Over the last decade, new technologies such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), instant payments and API-based payment aggregation have introduced a radically new way of thinking about enabling monetary and financial transactions. At the same time, new start-ups and traditional banks increasingly compete by offering new payment services and methods to their customers. Even central banks have realised that they need to rethink their role at the apex of the monetary system and have started to introduce fully digital representations of their existing official currencies, both on the wholesale and the retail level.

The academy provides a thorough deep dive into the topic of digital payments. It starts from the technological foundations, covers the economics behind new key developments in payments and critically assesses the evolving regulation of the modern payments space. Participants will engage in interactive lectures, conduct case studies and discuss with experts, policymakers and industry representatives the defining trends in this area. More specifically, the academy will cover a diverse range of topics such as cryptocurrencies, tokenized money (e.g. centralized stablecoins), new ledgers that facilitate cross-border payments, payment integration through new intermediaries, instant payment rails, and central bank money as a settlement asset and a retail payments instrument (such as the Digital Euro). The course will focus mostly – but not exclusively – on an EU context and combine insights from various perspectives such as economics, law, regulation and corporate business cases.