Digital currencies: A new frontier

Over the past decade, rapid technological innovation and the increasing pace of digitalisation have transformed the payment landscape in Malaysia. Digital payment adoption has accelerated, alongside a more diverse landscape of payment service providers. More recently, digital currencies are gaining traction – typically leveraging on tokenisation and DLT to facilitate P2P transfers without the need for intermediaries (Diagram 1). Central banks are also experimenting with central bank digital currencies (CBDC) – a new form of central bank money that represents a direct liability of the central bank.