How radically will digital currencies change our methods of exchange and the way that we think about money? With innovation in digital payments barreling ahead, these questions are now commanding the attention of the World Economic Forum and other international institutions.
Regardless of how Facebook's own digital currency moonshot, Libra, fares, it has already provided a wake-up call for firms and policymakers around the world. "If revolution there is to be, let us rather undertake it than undergo it," Otto von Bismarck once said. The question for policymakers is not whether to try to shape the digital money revolution, but how.
Digital money is already a key battleground in finance, with technology firms, payment processing companies and banks all vying to become the gateway into the burgeoning platform-based economy.