Why Iceland wants payment sovereignty without isolation

Iceland is developing domestic payment alternatives to improve resilience rather than replace cards. Iceland has made its perspective on payment sovereignty clear, saying that resilience doesn’t mean self-sufficiency. Tómas Brynjólfsson , Deputy Governor for Financial Stability at the Central Bank of Iceland , delivered this message in a speech at the MoneyLive Nordic Banking conference in Copenhagen on 30 October. Brynjólfsson explained that Iceland’s strategy to achieve payment sovereignty shouldn’t mean building everything at home. “It means combining international shelter with domestic resilience and ensuring, to the extent possible, that neither becomes a single point of failure,” said Brynjólfsson.