Dr. Ritesh Jain is a global fintech and payments leader, advisor to central banks and policymakers, and Chair (Payments) at India FinTech Forum. Formerly with HSBC, Visa, and Apple Pay expansion, he specialises in CBDC, digital public infrastructure, and financial inclusion, advising governments and institutions on next-generation monetary and payment systems globally.

The India FinTech Forum aims to position India’s fintech community as a global leader in innovation, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy, fostering inclusive growth and impactful transformation in the financial sector.

CBDCs, Tokenised Deposits, and Stablecoins: Designing Coexistence, Not Competition

The global conversation around digital money has been dominated by a false choice: public versus private, sovereign versus market-driven, CBDCs versus stablecoins. In reality, the future monetary system will not be defined by competition between these instruments, but by how effectively they are designed to coexist within a layered financial architecture.Central Bank Digital Currencies, tokenised deposits, and stablecoins each solve fundamentally different problems. CBDCs anchor sovereign trust and settlement finality. Tokenised deposits extend the commercial banking system into programmable financial markets. Stablecoins enable global, always-on digital commerce and liquidity mobility. The strategic challenge for policymakers is not choosing one over the other - it is designing an ecosystem where each operates within clearly defined roles, risk boundaries, and interoperability standards.Drawing on global pilots, cross-border corridor experiments, and emerging regulatory models, this keynote will explore how coexistence can preserve monetary sovereignty, sustain bank intermediation, unlock programmable finance innovation, and reduce systemic fragmentation.Because the next phase of financial evolution will not be won by the strongest instrument - it will be defined by the strongest architecture.