The National Bank of Georgia Releases the First Draft of the National Fintech Development Strategy

04 November, 2024

To foster an inclusive and innovative financial ecosystem, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) has prepared the first draft of the national fintech development strategy.

The strategy, developed in collaboration with the World Bank, aims to strengthen cooperation among public and private stakeholders both domestically and internationally.

To ensure the strategy aligns with the perspectives of all relevant stakeholders, the NBG is releasing the first draft of the document for public feedback and encourages all interested parties to actively engage, communicate, and share their insights on the strategy.

Domestically, the fintech development strategy strives to enable primary fintech infrastructure and reduce entry barriers for new market participants through projects, such as Open Banking/Finance, Regulatory Sandbox, "Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as an Ecosystem", Instant Payments System etc.

At an international level, the strategy aims to position Georgia as a regional fintech hub in the Middle Corridor. To achieve this, the NBG is actively cooperates with countries in the region and tries to motivate them. Moreover, thinking about the "Cross-border Regulatory Sandbox" concept, Georgia seeks to facilitate regulatory harmonization across borders, attract foreign fintech companies and talent, and promote modern financial infrastructure development.

The strategic vision for fintech development focuses on three key dimensions:

• Proactive regulatory policy implementation to encourage regulatory-driven innovations in the financial sector.
• Early-stage experimentation of new technologies to create modern financial infrastructure, promoting technology-driven innovations in the financial sector: One of the priorities in this dimension is to identify the advantages of blockchain-based financial infrastructure to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of existing systems.
• Supporting "Beyond-Georgia" fintech ecosystem: Georgia, as a small, open economy, has limited market capacity to scale domestically. Therefore, the focus is on the fintech initiatives that emphasize international cooperation. For example, the NBG is involved in the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub's project mBridge, which aims to strengthen international trade connections among central and commercial banks through wholesale CBDCs.

The NBG will engage in consultations with the stakeholders to develop a comprehensive fintech development strategy with clear actions plan based on the feedback received.

Interested parties are invited to submit their comments and recommendations at [email protected] by December 4, 2024.