Currency Research will be holding the inaugural Silk Road Cash & Payments Conference in Almaty from 27-29 March.
This new initiative, co-hosted with the National Bank of Kazakhstan, is bringing together central banks and regulators from across Central Asia (as well as the wider Asia, Africa and European regions) from the cash and payments industries for two and half days of education, networking and social activities.
Currency Research Vice President Tom Mitchell comments: ‘Central Asia is a fascinating and perhaps under experienced region. There is a huge amount of development going on requiring the rapid advancement of payment systems. However, countries in the region in the main also have high levels of cash use, and some of the most modern cash in the world (with Kazakhstan in particular having won several awards recently for their banknotes), but typically operate extremely centralised distribution systems. This is a fantastic opportunity to showcase and debate different systems’.
The event will be opened by Governor Galymzhan Pirmatov of the National Bank of Kazakhstan before splitting into a dual track format – with one track focusing on cash (topics including Currency Design & Production, Cash Centre Modernisation & Automation, Coin Circulation, Evolution of the Cash Cycle and Technical Innovation) and one track focusing on payments (topics including Changing Payments Landscape, Modernisation of Payments Infrastructure, CBDCs, Cross Border Payments, Payments Technology Update and the Future of Banking).
In all around 45 speakers will be presenting throughout the event, which also include two pre-conference workshops.
The event will conclude with a conference dinner overlooking the city of Almaty, followed the next day by a tour of the Banknote Factory of Kazakhstan’s production facilities and a city tour of Almaty hosted by the Bank.
For more information, visit: events.currencyresearch.com.
