Professor Victor Muriden, Director of SOAS Centre for Global Finance and AXA Chair of Global Finance, will speak at the “International Dialogue on Global Digital Finance” (IDGDF), organised by the UN Secretary-General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals. The IDGDF will provide a vehicle for constructive and inclusive dialogue at the nexus of international governance, digital finance, and sustainable development.

The dialogue will focus on the particular challenges in advancing good governance of global digital finance platforms. Some of these challenges are already in, often heated, debate, for example :

1.      Cross-border digital financial services offered by mobile money providers and the resulting need to new regulatory geometry.

2.      Increasing importance of global e-commerce platforms in our economies, for example for small businesses by facilitating access to global markets, but also on issues of taxation.

3.      Entry in digital finance of tech giants like Applei, ride hailing platforms such as Grabii and Uberiii with little convergence on the governance of these developments.

4.      Repercussions of Libra on financial and monetary policies in every developing country as well as macro-economic effects.iv Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and their global effects, as well as GDFPs’ ability to harness these to scale even faster.

5.      Cross-border data access, usage and exchange, not only central to economic growth but is also key to effective digital financing of the SDGs and could be challenged by the emergence of natural monopolies in the digital landscape.