Japan sets up a working group on the impact of Facebook's Balance before the G7

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese authorities have set up a working group on the impact of Facebook's proposed Libra digital coinage on monetary policy and financial regulation, government sources said in a report. of a meeting of G7 financial leaders where the topic will be at the center of the agenda.

The working group, consisting of the Bank of Japan, the Ministry of Finance and the Financial Services Agency, has started meeting this week and will seek to coordinate policies to mitigate the impact that the Libra could have on regulation, monetary policy, the regulation of taxes and payments, the sources said.

The social media giant's plan to create a digital currency has raised fears among global regulators that it will quickly become systemic given Facebook's broad cross-border reach.

France is taking advantage of the chairmanship of the Group of Economic Powers of the Group of Seven to create a working group to examine how central banks can ensure that digital currencies such as Libra are subject to regulation ranging from money laundering. Money to the protection of consumers.

The head of the European Central Bank, Benoit Coeure, is due to present a preliminary report on this subject next week at a meeting of G7 finance ministers in Chantilly, north of Paris.

Japan hopes to gather support from other countries to expand the working group to a larger group of fiscal and financial regulators, given the wide range of policies that can be affected by digital currencies, officials said.

In Japan, the central bank does not oversee the banking regulation, which is managed by the Financial Services Agency.

As chairman of the largest group of the G20 economies this year, Japan will also look for ways to align the separate G7 and G20 efforts to address the political implications of Libya, officials said.

At a summit held in Japan last month after Facebook's announcement of the Libra plan, G20 leaders said they were closely monitoring the situation and that the situation was unfavorable. They "remained alert to existing and emerging risks" related to cryptographic badets.

They also urged regulators, including the Financial Stability Board (FSB), to advise the G20 on multilateral responses to the growing presence of crypto-badets.