CBPC Roadshow: Bridging the Gap: Connecting Payments Research with Central Bank Policy – Ezechiel Copic & Elif Akoğuz [Episode #1]

Jordan Taylor 00:00:35  All right. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the exchange of Currency Research. And today we are recording a special road to CBPC, the central bank payments conference. My name is Jordan Taylor, and I am pleased to be welcome today Ezechiel Copic of Visa and Elif Akoğuz, who is a PhD candidate from Ku Leuven in Belgium. It’s a pleasure to have you both.

Elif Akoğuz 00:01:07  Pleasure.

Ezechiel Copic 00:01:07  Thanks for having us.

Jordan Taylor 00:01:09  Of course, of course. And the reason we wanted to do this, as you both know, is that, What? You’re supposed to have a little event last month that, Global forces conspired to, to postpone for us, but we we wanted to maintain a connection with the conference community.

Jordan Taylor 00:01:26  And so we thought it would be a great idea to to connect with you both. Zeke, as you know, we. Well, as you both know, obviously, we have implemented this year for the first time at the central Bank Payments Conference, a new research initiative in which we initiated a call for papers, really trying to connect, the academic world, central Bank research world with policymakers. and so we are thrilled to have the support of visa for that initiative. And Elif is one of our winners who wrote a paper submitted for us, and so we are happy to have have them both. Zeke, if I could just start with you and maybe you can talk about your role at the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute and perhaps a little bit about why visa is supporting the KR Payments Research Partnership.

Ezechiel Copic 00:02:24  Yeah. Listen. Thanks, Jordan. Alif, it’s really nice to to meet you. And again, I am definitely looking forward to seeing all of you guys in Istanbul. fingers crossed that obviously this will go on without a hitch.

Ezechiel Copic 00:02:35  so. Yeah, so a little bit about, myself. So, my name is Ezekiel Zeke for short. I work as a director at the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute. we are effectively, so we’re housed under Visa’s global government affairs division, and we’re effectively Visa’s in-house policy think tank. so, you know, we focus on creating new knowledge, at the intersection of payments, innovation and regulation. So, you know, I specifically cover things like, you know, new digital asset technology like stablecoins and CBDCs and, and tokenize deposits, but we also do a lot of other work around instant payments, around more kind of traditional economic, issues and topics like growth and productivity. and so our group basically, you know, apart from the research, you know, we really try and promote a dialogue, among key stakeholders, which is why, obviously, we’re so thrilled to be sponsoring the new research program. that Currency research is doing at the at the central Bank payments Conference. you know, we we do host a lot of events.

Ezechiel Copic 00:03:41  We bring together a community of experts, around the world to talk about these things. and when it comes to specifically the research agenda. Right. one of the things that we’re really passionate about, obviously, is bringing together academics. the public sector, as well as the private sector. you know, because we, we really think that, like, you know, decision makers really need to have access to all of this timely, evidence based insight. so, you know, this this landscape moves really quickly. Right. I mean, lots of different things, whether it’s digital assets, or just new payment innovation, just in general. and so we really wanted to, you know, help sponsor and bring together, all of these researchers who are doing some really fascinating stuff. because it actually helps give, you know, policymakers, industry stakeholders the tools they need to really solve the real world problems. so academics, like Alif and many others who are going to present. Right. They bring this methodological rigor and these fresh theoretical like insights and frameworks, together.

Ezechiel Copic 00:04:48  obviously having the public sector, having a lot of our central bank colleagues and people, maybe from finance ministries and things like that. You know, they offer the on the ground policy context. and then for the private sector. Right. We, you know, I mean, we hopefully we try and provide like, real world data. our own experience. and then the ability to kind of move these insights into practice really quickly. and so, you know, we kind of view this, right, as making research not only intellectually strong and sort of intellectually curious. but also hopefully that it’s actionable. so that we can kind of create this, this workspace for all of us, to kind of work together. and so I’m really excited. You know, I mean, obviously getting to talk to you. I’m excited to hear all the research, from all of the, the people who submitted, and then having a great dialogue. So I look forward to it. thanks for for having us.

Jordan Taylor 00:05:43  Absolutely.

Jordan Taylor 00:05:43  Of course. Thank you for that. Elif, if you wouldn’t mind saying a few words about your background, your research interests, and of course, the paper that brought you to our attention.

Elif Akoğuz 00:10:14  I’m a researcher from Kalev and, who specializes on how financial technologies and data regulations change the informational space of our economies and how we can change by, determining which actors get access to what piece of information, how these policies or technologies can shape economic outcomes like competition, market efficiency or customer welfare. And in terms of the topics that I would like to study, actually like some of the things that Ezekiel said quite align as well with how I would like to pursue research.

Elif Akoğuz 00:10:53  I like to work on topics that are closely related with policy questions, and in doing so, I would like to always, even when doing policy work out a theoretical work, I would like to focus on questions that can inform policy decisions. And because of that particularly, I’m very excited to to attend the conference in Istanbul in the upcoming months, because I also believe it’s very crucial, especially for the kind of research that I conduct is very crucial to have, close ties not only with policy makers, but also with the industry, which is something that can be one of the deficiencies of academia. At times we have like very broad and philosophical or theoretical understandings of how certain mechanisms work. But there are some very crucial aspects about how things work in practice that we may not always, be completely aware about. And then those can be the most interesting additions or that that can be what makes or breaks a paper, what makes it relevant or interesting. So I’m really looking forward to understand the industry perspective of of payments a bit with this conference.

Elif Akoğuz 00:12:09  And if I may briefly discuss about like what I will present at the CBB PC.

Jordan Taylor 00:12:19  Right off the tongue.

Multiple Speakers 00:12:20  It is.

Elif Akoğuz 00:12:20  Yeah, it’s a mouthful. abbreviation. But yeah, I will be working. I will be focusing on a specific, financial regulation that is called open banking. And for those who may not have heard of it before, it is the umbrella term that we used to refer to data regulations that, oblige banks to share their clients financial data with third party service providers upon the clients request. So the the the, the objective behind this policy is to foster, innovation and competition by democratizing access to financial data, which was, until very recently, exclusively accessed by incumbent financial players. So by opening access to this sort of data to new and small entrants, the policy is expected to create like lower barriers to entry, improve innovation and competition. So what we discuss in our paper is that, in fact, when we look at this policy in a more comprehensive, more holistic point of view.

Elif Akoğuz 00:13:35  Some of the expectations we have from this policy can indeed be reversed. So one of the most like straightforward expectations about open banking policy is that customers are customers tend to benefit from it. Right. They will have access ideally to cheaper products or more innovative products, new products, especially in financial industries where financial data is a crucial input. And again, simultaneously to that, banks are expected to lose profits because now they no longer have access to an exclusive data that they can leverage later on in services where financial data becomes a crucial input. So to give some examples, this could be credit services, insurance services, payment initiations and many others. So open banking basically means that banks will lose their upper hand in the provision of these services. So the first implication of such a policy is banks lose and customers win. But what we establish with this paper is that when we look into the spillover effects of this sort of policy, this expected outcome can be completely reversed. To illustrate that, let me just give the example of payment payment data.

Elif Akoğuz 00:14:57  So when you open without payment data being shared with other parties, banks have incentive to subsidize payment services because once acquiring a payment client, they can later on leverage that relation, that exclusive access to data to provide new services and products at an advantage to this costumer without open. With open banking, that incentive is eliminated. So we argue that when open banking is implemented, this is going to lead to a hike in the payment fee. Payment service fee of banks. Simultaneously, there will be a demand shift for this sort of products because with open banking, having access to a bank account means much more than what it used to mean. Now it becomes the gateway to a bunch of new, potentially cheaper or more innovative products or services. And in order to access all these products and services, you first have to acquire a payment account. So we argue that as long as banks hold some sort of market power in providing these services, this demand rise from consumers will also result in a hike in payment prices.

Elif Akoğuz 00:16:19  So this all together implies that actually while in like data driven industries, we see banks will lose out just like planned and costumers will gain just like planned. But when we look at the markets where data is produced, for instance the payment market, we see the exact opposite impact because we expect the payment prices to rise and that will hurt customers and benefit banks. So we see that in certain cases, this second order impact can actually reverse the first order impact and leave customers actually worse off than the case before.

Jordan Taylor 00:17:00  I want to jump in. That was that was a wonderful synopsis. Thank you. Were you as surprised as I think I was? And I don’t want to speak for for Ezekiel or anyone else who who read the paper. But I think some of your, your basic conclusions and findings were very counterintuitive to, to people who, who have a, you know, even a limited understanding of open banking or open finance, which you also get into. In a subsequent section, you know, how how much did your findings deviate from your expectations? You and I know you had a few co-authors, and feel free to give them a little shout out if you like as well.

Elif Akoğuz 00:17:43  Yes. Thank. Actually, thank you for reminding me of that. That slipped my mind. So this is in fact, a paper jointly written by me and Tariq Rockne and Tomas Valdes. And I think we did not hold any clear expectations of what we what we thought we would see as a result of this study. it can definitely there are counterintuitive results, but it is because we have a theoretical setting where we kind of isolated certain impacts in order to understand how they correlate, how they interact with each other, while deliberately choosing to leave out some other real life dynamics. For instance, implementing open banking is a costly process, right? So we do not currently account for that cost. And once you account for the IT cost, liability cost and all that. Banks may actually of course be worse off. But then how they start it. But leaving that aside like this is of course a possibility. We just wanted to show that the simple, the simple observation that by changing the incentives around data production, you are not only changing like the results in the market where data is used, but also in the market where data is generated.

Elif Akoğuz 00:19:09  Data is not an exogenous entity, right? It is a byproduct of the activities conducted by financial entities. So it is subject to these incentives and leaving cost aside to show that The loss in data driven markets can potentially be recovered in the data producing markets for financial entities is, I think, already like a striking finding on its own.

Jordan Taylor 00:19:41  I want to sort of pivot to the the policy implications for this because as, as you know, and Zeke, as I’m sure you know as well, and as you point out in your paper, open banking and open finance are proliferating around the globe. how do you see or reframe it another way, if you could have a conversation with a regulator who was taking steps to implement one of these regimes, how might you suggest that they construct that based on what you’ve you found here. And are there any regimes that that you’re aware of that if not, obviously they’re not necessarily taking into account your paper. but but perhaps you’re seeing some of some of these things play out that you’ve, you’ve pointed if that’s if that’s possible.

Multiple Speakers 00:20:49  well, I would say.

Elif Akoğuz 00:20:50  In the current regulatory space and the discussions among the stakeholders seem to focus more on the potential downsides of open banking for the banking industry. I did not see any discussion up until our paper. To my to the best of my knowledge about the spillover impacts of this sort of policies into markets where data is produced in this case like payment markets. I think it is an overlooked factor and it needs to be accounted for more clearly in policy discussions as well. But that being said, I wouldn’t go as far as saying like, okay, open banking is certainly a, a bad for consumers or something that banks should definitely look forward to. But there is definitely a very important dynamic that comes into play that is so far completely disregarded by most analysis of it, and it has enough power to reverse what we think about it in certain cases. in terms of what I would not necessarily recommend, but at least like I, I could make one remark in terms of like optimal policymaking in this domain is, it is that it is important to differentiate between different kind of payment providers.

Elif Akoğuz 00:22:26  So in our paper we look into different payment providers in terms of whether they are vertically integrated to other services or not. So a traditional bank for instance, is not only providing payment services but also credit insurance, all sorts of services where that that is intrinsically linked to payments through the information domain. Whereas stablecoins, CBDC, all, all sorts of even electronic money institutions, like all sorts of specialized payment providers, they operate with a different mechanism. They are not optimizing several services altogether. So when you impose data sharing mandates on these two very different kind of payment providers, you arrive at different results. So what we notice is that with banks. We have to keep in mind that we run the risk of losing the potential subsidy that the payment accounts have been receiving because of this data advantage that banks had before, whereas opening other payments, specialised payments alternatives like CBDCs or stablecoins, enabling data sharing with these alternatives, which would also be probably technologically also an easier endeavor given the structure, the the the organization of these payment methods.

Elif Akoğuz 00:23:53  Here we do not lose any subsidy. In fact, here, open banking implementations have a more like likely to have a more positive benefit compared to mandating open banking on firms on banks with integrated business objectives. That is not to say that we should not do it. But that is to say that we should be aware that because of banks optimizing different products simultaneously, this policy will have far reaching implications that spread into other markets, especially when it’s directed into this vertically integrated entity. So maybe we should consider the alternative of focusing on specialized payment providers as potential sources of open data havens, let’s say.

Jordan Taylor 00:24:44  Yeah. Thank you for that. Alif, you you anticipated my my next question. You must have you must have known where I was, where I was headed. Zeke, I know that that stablecoins obviously are something that you spend a lot of time thinking about and writing about. how do you. Do you see any any. Have you considered any of the sort of implications between some of the things that Alif has written about and talked about here today with some of your own interests with respect to digital currencies and cross-border payments and regulation.

Ezechiel Copic 00:25:25  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I think I mean, this at least, you know, comments sort of to me really, you know, crystallised this need for having research forums like this. because one of the things so I used to be a former central banker, at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and, you know, central bankers, obviously their main focus is, you know, they’re worried about financial stability. So when they craft regulations, when they do these things right, they want to make sure that they are, ensuring the stability of the system. you know, both from a financial perspective, from a macroeconomic perspective. Right. And so that’s really where their, focus and intention lies. But the reality is, is that all of these, you know, we don’t really know what the regulations are going to sort of what the impact is that they’re going to have, until they’re implemented, right? Until they’re out in the wild. And so, you know, a leaf’s research is really important because, you know, one of the things and she hit on two things that I think is really important when we think about regulations.

Ezechiel Copic 00:26:22  One is the importance of information and data, and how crucial that is, especially when you have these big information like asymmetry gaps. Right? I mean, people really, profit on the fact that, like, some people know this information and some don’t. and the other big, you know, the other big issue that I think central banks and regulators, need more help and understanding is really around the economic incentives. Right. Central banks are not profit making, entities. Right. And so they need to better understand the the economic incentives that, you know, issuers have, financial institutions have, you know, when they’re kind of creating these products. and so you brought up stablecoins, and like, so, for example, I do a lot of research around the implications that stablecoin regulation has on stablecoin issuers. Kind of specifically, but then kind of the, the macroeconomic, ecosystem more broadly. and so for example, looking at, say, the genius act in the US, compared to, say Mika in Europe, right.

Ezechiel Copic 00:27:32  both of them strive for basically the same outcome, right? Which is stability. they want to make sure that consumers are protected. that, you know, they want to make sure that stablecoins, stablecoin issuers, when they’re issuing these stablecoins, have a solid base behind it. Right. So they’re they’re, backed 1 to 1 by reserves. but both of these policies, they they can tend to. Well, they want the same outcome. They go about it in slightly different ways that have can have very different and significant ramifications. So when you look at, say genius, they’re very specific on the assets that stablecoin issuers can hold, so they list them out quite clearly. so cash deposits, US treasuries, money market funds, things like that. whereas Micah is a little bit more vague. they just say high quality liquid assets. so it’s a little bit more difficult for issuers to fully understand, but, I mean, you get the general sense. and then when it comes to asset ratios, the, the genius act doesn’t actually give any guidance.

Ezechiel Copic 00:28:39  It just says, listen, you have to invest in these assets, but we’re not going to tell you that. You have to have so much in deposits and so much in, you know, treasury bills and things like that, where meek is quite the opposite. Right. So Micah says, you know, if you’re a stablecoin issuer, you have to have at least 30%, in, bank deposits. and if you get to so if you get to a size like, I think it’s like 5 billion in issuance, then you have to have 60% in bank deposits. And so all of those have consequences, right? Whether intended or unintended. And so the reality is when you actually look at the impact, the economic impact. And so I wrote this paper, kind of using the efficient frontier, portfolio model. and so stablecoin issuers in the US, because of the regulations and because of the underlying assets, can sort of expect to make around 3 to 3.5%, of expected revenue, expected return on the assets that they hold.

Ezechiel Copic 00:29:42  so it’s not a lot. And this also is before any operational costs or anything like that. but in Europe, that number drops dramatically to about 40 basis points between 40 basis points and 1%, depending on how large you are as a, as an institution. so you can see that these two, these, these two regulations have dramatically different impacts on the economic incentive, which then can also have the knock on effects as to the product, you know, the product availability for consumers and things like that. And so all of this research, right. Having these forums and having a way for industry players like visa to talk about these issues as well as, you know, academic researchers who are really diving in deeply, and provide a lot of this theoretical, frameworks and the credibility, right, to do a lot of this, like very in-depth thinking. all of us, hopefully that will help inform, policymakers. and that’s why I love forums like this a lot. So. Yeah.

Jordan Taylor 00:30:43  Terrific. I want to ask you both something that you’ve each alluded to.

Jordan Taylor 00:30:47  And Zeke, you kind of touched on it just now. I read something a few weeks ago from a, a researcher at a G7 central bank. You know, I don’t need to name which central bank. and they said that it’s only in the last ten years or so. And they’re only speaking for this one particular bank. But within the last decade, research within the institution was connected to policy that prior to that research seemingly was just for the sake of research at this one particular central bank. As a former central banker and obviously somebody who works often with the public sector, is is that surprising? And if it’s the case at this particular institution, does it speak to potential gaps elsewhere or are we not quite as aligned? You know, is the research not really meeting the policymakers where we need it to at this point? And obviously you leave. Sorry, sorry. Obviously Alif does that. Does that sort of statement surprise you as well as a researcher?

Multiple Speakers 00:32:01  I wouldn’t say.

Elif Akoğuz 00:32:03  It surprises.

Multiple Speakers 00:32:04  Me.

Elif Akoğuz 00:32:06  It is true. I think most economists would like agree that there is a big literature, especially in theoretical work, that can be quite detached from policymaking or sometimes certain realities of the market. And I believe that this sort of research holds its own place. It serves a certain purpose of its own, that is to, uncover more core dynamics, like certain overarching dynamics and mechanisms and insights that that we can produce and apply to many markets, many conditions in in order to understand these sort of things, you have to look step back a bit and isolate yourself from the nitty gritty details and really understand the deep way. What’s happening. Like underneath everything. But then when it comes to policy, of course, we need to try to like get back into closer to the question where we are and the specifics of the situation and not like define our medium more carefully and probably produce results that cannot be like broadly applicable, but as accurate as possible to the question at hand. I believe that the second kind of especially theoretical work is not always that easy to find, but it is out there, and I find it particularly the most interesting kind of work.

Elif Akoğuz 00:33:43  But I am not surprised that, I could probably I never worked at a central bank, but I wouldn’t be surprised that people share the sentiment that the.

Multiple Speakers 00:33:53  The.

Elif Akoğuz 00:33:54  The research does not touch policy enough. I think being, like, joining you from Belgium, I am in a kind of biased and, environment. we are always in close contact with the European, institutions. And this is a place to have, like, to be working at the intersection of policy and research. But I think probably we are on the luckier side in that. But the, the, the field of economics in general could probably benefit from having more, more research produced that really, truly takes the realities of industry and policymaking into account more.

Multiple Speakers 00:34:44  Yeah.

Ezechiel Copic 00:34:44  And I think for me, you know, initially, Jordan, when you when you said what you said, I was initially surprised, that that central banks felt or at least whatever this institution was. Felt that their research maybe wasn’t as focused on policy. but so the more I thought about it, like, again, it goes to this information asymmetry gap.

Ezechiel Copic 00:35:05  You know, when I was at the New York Fed, I worked in the markets, group and the markets group basically was the operational, arm of the entire Federal Reserve System. And so we were in the market every day trading, talking to market participants, talking to broker dealers. so we had all of this information and understanding of how the market really works. And so I think a lot of that then fed itself into the research that like our super smart economists, you know, on our research side, were doing, because then we could share information we could share, like, hey, this is happening in the market. Do we do we have a sense as to why this is happening? and it could sort of inform their research. and then from there research, we would get smarter about how the market works, and it would kind of sort of had this like virtual cycle. I think for institutions. whether they’re central banks or finance ministries or whatever, who may not have some of that, like on the ground experience.

Ezechiel Copic 00:36:05  maybe then it can create this environment where you are writing in a more theoretical kind of an ivory tower way, where you don’t fully understand how markets are working. You understand how they should work, right? but you don’t necessarily understand how they actually work. and so I think, again, it’s one of these things where if we can start to explain to them, and share insights, right, that they can get a better sense of that. Right. And that will come not only from the industry side, on like how things work. but then also, you know, from the academic side on, on then really kind of diving into that and answering then those, those questions. so.

Jordan Taylor 00:37:40   I think, obviously we are very hopeful that we can get together in late August, I think August 31st through the 2nd of September in Istanbul. any sort of closing remarks about about your paper, anything that perhaps we didn’t touch on it and also be curious to know what sort of research pursuits you have in the pipeline or what you’re starting to, kick around, mentally.

Multiple Speakers 00:38:14  Sure.

Elif Akoğuz 00:38:16  well, in terms of the research that I was just discussing.

Multiple Speakers 00:38:20  One the the key.

Elif Akoğuz 00:38:22  Like outcome, I would like to live. anyone who listens to this would be that it is very important to understand, especially in financial markets where markets are deeply interconnected with each other through many dimensions, including information.

Elif Akoğuz 00:38:41  I think policymakers should always have the tendency to. And evaluate the results of their policy with a holistic view. Examining markets in isolation can lead to deceiving outcomes. It can mislead us. And when it comes to financial policymaking, I think it’s very important to keep in mind the how interconnected all these markets are to each other and how much they’re likely to impact each other. in my pipeline after this, I have a paper that is on in the privacy and cybersecurity, investment decisions of platforms, particularly with like, payment platforms in mind, trying to understand what drives the decisions between decisions regarding how much privacy to give to users and also how to invest in cybersecurity, especially in an environment where users may not be in position to properly evaluate and account for those cybersecurity efforts, because they may not have the sophistication to actually like, you know, go through your cybersecurity policies. This sort of information asymmetry leads to certain inefficiencies. And in our paper, we again try to look at it from a policy makers perspective and see how can we how can we approach this problem.

Elif Akoğuz 00:40:13  Should we provide some cybersecurity standards to the industry to allow them to coordinate, or should we just mandate certain platforms to actually comply with it? What would be the best approach? So that will be what’s coming next. And before I leave you to it, I just want to say that I’m very pleased to be here, and I’m really looking forward to have more conversations on this in Istanbul. I cannot overemphasize personally how much I believe academia and probably both other sectors as well, can benefit from more communication with each other in creating like new research and new products. So thank you for that initiator.

Jordan Taylor 00:40:59  Of course. Well, we’re thrilled that, that obviously that you submitted your paper and that it was so well received. And, you know, thank you for joining us today. I think I know that you or I saw I think that you have a presentation next month. is that right in for the bis?

Elif Akoğuz 00:41:18  Me? Oh, yes. Sorry. You know, my schedule’s better than I do. I do.

Jordan Taylor 00:41:22  Now. Now I feel like a weirdo.

Elif Akoğuz 00:41:25  No. I just have the worst memory ever. Like, I without my calendar. I am no one. I have to check everything.

Jordan Taylor 00:41:32  Well, best of luck with that. And, I assume you’re presenting on what we talked about here. What you you wrote?

Elif Akoğuz 00:41:39  Yes, indeed. If anyone finds themselves at Cosenza in May. I think 18th. You can always come. Listen to it live.

Jordan Taylor 00:41:50  Excellent. Well, we will we will link to your paper. in the. In the show notes. here. When, when the issue was published. But we we thank you for taking the time. And we look forward to obviously seeing you, in person. no more of this virtual stuff. so wonderful to have you, Ezekiel. thank you for for joining us. I know we ask a lot of you. at least we have recently. So. So thank you for putting up with us again. before you go, and the last thing that Elif said sort of reminded me.

Jordan Taylor 00:42:27  I know you’re working on a, a fragmentation indicator, and I know it’s not going to go live until July. how are things proceeding with that? If if you can offer anything.

Ezechiel Copic 00:42:40  Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I, I’m not directly involved in it, but our team is certainly involved in it. And, and at the I think it speaks again to this, this need for information, this need to provide data, so that everybody can kind of, you know, be understanding the situation. And so one of the things that we are, you know, working on is this global fragmentation, index, to really kind of understand how, you know, the payment system can be fragmented. you know, whether that’s through, regulations or whether that’s through, you know, laws and public policies, even just all of these market dynamics as well. to get a really better sense of that. and so we’re happy we’ll be sharing that. I think it should go fully live, maybe, maybe July, but maybe might be more closer to like, actually when the conference is.

Ezechiel Copic 00:43:33  so I’m happy to, I believe we’ll probably write up a quick article that we will share in the central Bank payments newsletter. so hopefully, I think in the August edition. just to give a, a a preview of that, to, to look at that. but yeah, so we’re we’re excited. and let me just say again, I’m really happy, and really thrilled that currency research has started this. I think it’s really important. I think it’s going to be a great complement to the conversations, that we have. I’ve always had great conversations, always at the central Bank Payments conference. But I think, you know, one of the things that is always really helpful is when someone can say, look, here is my idea, here’s my hypothesis, here’s the data, here’s, you know, how I am looking to address this issue. and so we can all read about it, we can all look at it, we can all kind of come to the table with sort of the same information and then share a different perspectives.

Ezechiel Copic 00:44:31  Right? because I’m sure I have a different perspective than many of the central banks. they’re going to be they’re on open banking or instant payments or stablecoins or whatever it is. Right? and one of the things that we really crucially need is more of that data, so that we can all be looking at the sort of the same data or looking at the same frameworks, or ways in which to study the topic. And, you know, so having amazing researchers like Alif and others who are bringing that data, bringing that perspective, bringing that, analytical rigor, to this will be super helpful. so we’re we’re very excited. And yes, I think, also something to be said for being in person as well, to continue these conversations without, you know, some of the, the technical hiccups and things like that, which I know I, I caused previously. So I also understand all of this and appreciate your patience. So.

Jordan Taylor 00:45:27  Well, I’m pretty sure we’ve all been on the wrong end of, of technical trouble.

Jordan Taylor 00:45:32  but I couldn’t agree more with what each of you said. And, you know, I think I speak for everybody. Currency research. We are very much looking forward to meeting you both in person and the rest of your fellow researchers. Alif in in August and September in Istanbul. I encourage everyone, if you have an interest in payments or central banking or academic research to, to give it a look. once again, thank you both for taking the time, today. I appreciate it very much. This has been a special episode of The exchange on the road to the central Bank Payments conference for currency research. I’m Jordan Taylor. Thank you once again to Elif and Ezechiel Copic. Until next time.