The Global Payments Week (GPW) is biennial summit of senior staff of central banks, securities commissions and multilateral bodies covering payment and settlement systems. The GPW is convened by the Payment Systems Development Group (PSDG) of the Financial Inclusion, Infrastructure and Access Global Solution team of Finance Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, World Bank.
The GPW 2018 – the 9th edition, was held in Kuala Lumpur from December 3-7th 2018. This was the first GPW in Asia. The co-hosts for GPW 2018 included: the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Centre for Monetary Studies in the Latin American and Caribbean region (CEMLA) and the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF).
The GPW 2018 was attended by 135 participants representing 74 different jurisdictions in addition to the co-hosts and other multilateral bodies, such as the IMF and the African Development Bank. The GPW 2018 had 14 plenary sessions spread over three days and a half; five separate half-day regional meetings for LAC, Asia, Africa, ECA and Pacific Islands. The LAC regional meetings continued for an additional day.
The GPW covered six broad themes:
- Developments in standards pertaining to financial market infrastructures;
- Fintech, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) and other Innovations in payment and settlement systems, with a special focus on how to harness them and their implications for regulation and oversight;
- Foreign exchange risk management;
- Remittances and cross-border payments;
- The nexus of payment systems and financial inclusion; and
- Cybersecurity.