The Riksbank would thus have an account in the ECB’s system so that settlement can be made in Riksbank money without having to keep the Swedish large-value payment system open 24 hours a day. The vision is simply that payments can be made immediately, regardless of what time of day they are made, and that settlement shall be in Riksbank money. In this vision, the e-krona  7 [9]  would be a national back-up to the private payment system and it would enable both instant payments and settlement in central bank money. Conclusion Let me conclude by summarising what I have said. I believe that it is important to update the money the Riksbank issues to a format that suits the modern economy. We will therefore develop a pilot version of a central bank digital currency – an e-krona. Once we have tested the pilot version we can choose to issue, or not to issue, a digital krona to the general public. I have also talked about the rapid changes in the payment market, where rapid real time alternatives will be important in the future. In my opinion, payments ought to be made as quickly as we exchange information in the current digital society. It should be possible to make payments instantly 24 hours a day and to settle them in Riksbank money. A connection to the ECB's technical platform, TIPS, would be one way of doing this.
You have probably seen pictures of bank runs – when queues form outside banks in crisis as people want to withdraw their money in the form of (safe) cash. This is why central bank money is still the linchpin of the system, even if it is rarely used in normal circumstances. The fact that it is available as an alternative acts as a kind of guarantee for the private bank money. 4 It is also the case that some key systems for payments are increasingly concentrated to a few agents. See, for instance, the card payment market where two American companies are entirely dominant in Sweden. Unlike our neighbouring countries, we do not have any domestic card payment network. This means that we are dependent on foreign infrastructures to make the majority of households’ payments. Without cash, therefore, an important part of the Swedish infrastructure would be completely in private ownership and dependent on foreign infrastructures and foreign companies. So if the use of cash continues to decline, it is not enough to say that this works fine at present, because the future will look rather different, regardless of whether we produce an e-krona. Other functions that cash has performed include functioning as a back-up when there have been disruptions to other forms of payment. It has also helped ensure  3  See, for instance, Fung et.al. (2018) and Söderberg (2018). 4 See, for instance, Tobin (1985).