The United States Federal Reserve will hold a conference next month on "payments innovation," which will include discussions around stablecoin business models and the tokenization of financial products and services.
The conference will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 21, and bring together a range of interested parties to discuss how to innovate and improve the payments system.
"Innovation has been a constant in payments to meet the changing needs of consumers and businesses," Fed Governor Christopher Waller said in Wednesday's release. "I look forward to examining the opportunities and challenges of new technologies, bringing together ideas on how to improve the safety and efficiency of payments, and hearing from those helping to shape the future of payments."
Along with the aforementioned stablecoin and tokenization ideas, the Payments Innovation Conference will feature panel discussions on the convergence of traditional and decentralized finance and the intersection of artificial intelligence and payments.
The conference will be livestreamed for the public on the agency's website.
The central bank has embraced crypto under the Trump administration. In April, the central bank withdrew guidance that previously discouraged banks from participating in crypto and stablecoin activities. The Fed has also ended a program supervising banks involved in crypto and removed the "reputational risk" classification from bank examinations, which were viewed as a win against crypto debanking, The Block previously reported.
The most recent minutes from July's Federal Open Market Committee suggested that fiat-pegged tokens could "improve the efficiency of the payment system ... They also observed that such stablecoins could increase the demand for the assets needed to back them, including Treasury securities."
