Here a biometric identification project, Aadhaar, has provided financial inclusion for the Indian population, increasing from 35 per cent in 2011 to 80 per cent in 2017. A remarkable result which shows that political will and some degree of coercion can take digitalisation and innovation far.
But even though digitalisation and innovation have laid the ground for smarter domestic payments solutions in many countries, central banks have failed to foster fast and efficient crossborder payments. In a world where domestic payments happen instantly and at no cost for the user, expensive cross-border payments that take days to complete seem remarkably oldfashioned.