Christina Segal-Knowles: Payments after the COVID crisis - emerging issues and challenges

Speech by Ms Christina Segal-Knowles, Executive Director for Financial Market Infrastructure Directorate of the Bank of England, at a webinar, organized by London School of Economics and Centre for Economic Policy Research, 11 June 2020.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
16 June 2020

Thanks Erik and thanks very much for inviting me to this webinar.

I'll talk through very briefly how payments were changing well before COVID-19 and the impact we've seen during the global health crisis. And then I'll begin to cover what central banks can and are doing in response.

Even before the current crisis, people were changing the way they pay.

For many if not all of you- the fact that the way we pay has been changing significantly won't be a surprise. You've experienced this. In London, where I live and work, contactless payments have become ubiquitous - from small coffee shops, to farmer's markets, to stalls at sporting and music events, the need to rush to the cash machine is gone - you can tap your card, phone or watch. We've become accustomed to online baskets and clicks; to summoning and paying for services on our phone.