Japan’s Aso Says G7 Should Talk Digital Currencies

Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso has expressed an interest in discussing central bank digital currencies (CBDC) at a virtual Group of Seven (G7) meeting set for Friday (Feb. 12), a report from the Mainichi says.

Aso told a press conference ahead of upcoming talks by G7 finance ministers and central bank officials that he thought it was “important for us to thrash out (policy measures regarding) digital currency issued by central banks,” the report says.

The G7 nations have viewed with caution China’s recent actions on its digital currency, involving several trials in recent months to gauge consumer interest and promote the new way of paying for things.

G7 officials worry that China’s work could threaten the historic positions of their conventional banking currencies, the Mainichi reports.

Aso also spoke of the debt relief program for developing nations, which was led mostly by the Group of 20 major economies throughout the pandemic, and about new international taxation rules for global tech firms.

The virtual meeting set to happen Friday will be the first one held by the G7 officials in 2021. Britain will hold the group presidency this year. This meeting will also be the first to take place under the new Biden administration in the U.S., with Janet Yellen as treasury secretary.

The meeting will feature leadership from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States plus the European Union talking about the global economy and the fallout and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

China’s months of CBDC trials have offered something of a blueprint for other countries to do similar digital coins, including the U.S. China’s experiments could end up having dire effects for foreign companies, such as Visa and Mastercard, among others, which have tried to gain a foothold in the country’s economy with $27 trillion of payments are available.