Digital money governance crucial for payments future
Aznan Abdul Aziz, Deputy Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, emphasized that governance, institutional roles, and system-wide resilience are critical for managing the diverse and converging digital payments ecosystem. He delivered a keynote address at the CB+DC Conference in Kuala Lumpur on May 12, 2026.
Embracing digital money's diverse future
The future of money will be inherently diverse, with multiple digital monetary instruments emerging alongside existing systems, each supporting different use cases.
This includes central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenised bank deposits, and regulated stablecoins, all evolving at a rapid pace.
Policymakers must embrace this diversity, shaping its evolution to ensure interoperability, mitigate risks, and deliver lasting economic value.
This requires an ecosystem-wide approach, recognising the complementary roles of banks, payment service providers, technology companies, and regulators.
Malaysia's DuitNow QR experience, prioritising common standards and system-wide interoperability, reinforces this lesson, allowing innovation and competition to flourish without market fragmentation.
Governance over technology
Central bank money has long served as the public anchor, underpinning trust and settlement finality.
In a diverse digital money ecosystem, CBDCs reinforce this role, providing a common reference point for trust.
The speech emphasized that governance, rather than technology, remains the binding constraint in digital money implementation.
Issues like legal enforceability and regulatory alignment are often the hardest to resolve, requiring coordination and trust at the institutional level.
Malaysia's Digital Asset Innovation Hub (DAIH) is designed as a governance-focused environment to ensure safe adoption at scale.
Resilience is a shared responsibility, demanding cross-border collaboration, as exemplified by Project Nexus, to embed trust and interoperability.