Bank of Canada is exploring more fintech innovations, says Deputy Governor

The Bank of Canada’s (BoC) Deputy Governor Carolyn Wilkins stated in a conference that the bank is exploring fintech innovations including its current project on a blockchain-based payment system, Reuters reported.

In her speech at a fintech conference, Wilkins said that the central bank is presently working on a blockchain experiment ‘Project Jasper’ that was launched last year as a collaborative effort between the central bank, Payments Canada and R3 blockchain consortium.

She also added that regulators are working on ways to craft policies that will harness the benefits of innovation while protecting and managing the underlying threats and risks to the fintech and customers.

“Project Jasper is something new for the Bank of Canada and it is one of the most productive experiments that we've had. We're certainly open to doing more of that,” Wilkins added, as reported by Reuters.

The regulators must also work to coordinate across Canada and globally, she stated however, acknowledging that different regulators may have different risk tolerances.

Wilkins has mentioned earlier in her published article that the blockchain experiment will run till later this spring. The experiment had shown how blockchain has potentials to surpass the Large Value Transfer System that is currently used in Canada for electronic wire transfers of large sums of money.