Nevertheless, they have significant consequences for the  structure of markets, with a substantial impact on our ability to impose and control our public policy choices regarding financial services, in particular in terms of legal, technological and operational certainty. For instance, which law is applicable, when the provision of services involves players established in different jurisdictions with sometimes contradictory legal requirements? The United States in particular is characterised by a broad definition of extraterritoriality. Besides the identification of the legal framework, there is also the question of the ability of a judicial authority to enforce the law, given the size of financial groups, the large number of 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  intermediaries, or the location of their various activities. The digitisation of financial services also introduces a new form of dependence on physical (mobile phones and connected objects) as well as digital (search engines, mobile applications) entry points and on the non-European technology companies that control and dominate them. Yet, competition law, created in the 19th century in a period when the State took a stand on monopolies, is proving to be ill-equipped to deal with these technology companies. Lastly, the dematerialisation of activities, by increasing the number of interconnections and system entry points, makes them more vulnerable to potential “cyber-attacks” and to their use for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes, and makes them more dependent, to counter this, on non-European players who also operate outside the regulated financial sectors.
Indeed, central bank money is the cornerstone of settlements between financial intermediaries and has every reason to remain so in the future: experience shows that financial players need a risk-free settlement asset. However, with the development of the tokenisation of financial assets, would it be advisable to tokenise their counterpart, the settlement currency? Doing this may lead to changes not in what constitutes the very foundation of central bank money – confidence – but in the way it is issued. It is in this context that the opportunity for a “wholesale” central bank  digital currency could arise. This requires central banks to invest in the technical innovations underpinning the digitisation of financial assets and their transfer methods, to conduct experiments and take advantage of them in order to improve the performance of the services they provide to the economy. And that is what the Banque de France is doing. With the support of its Lab, it has been investing in blockchain technology for several years now, and is implementing it on an operational level with its MADRE project for 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  managing the databases for SEPA creditor identifiers and bank branches. Another recent example is the ECB’s launch of the TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), with the aim of ensuring the coordinated development of instant payments.