Ranking Japan: Citi’s Digital Money Index
Citi and Imperial College London have been publishing their Digital Money Index for a number of years. This year’s index construction has been based on 77 data feeds (referred to as indicators) originating from multiple open source databases, the highest number to date, and evidence that the acceleration of digital money adoption is leading to increased depth and breadth of research.
This has also enabled an expansion of the index coverage from 84 to 113 countries. The data feeds get aggregated into four pillars as follows:
- Government and Market Support
- Financial and ICT Infrastructure
- Availability of Solutions
- Propensity to Adopt
While previously all four pillars were ranked equally, this year’s edition weighs “Government and Market Support” at 40%, with the other three pillars contributing 20% each. The 113 countries then get classified from “Materially Ready” to “In Transition” and “Emerging” to “Incipient”. The following table extracts the 22 top-ranked nations:
Japan’s position at #15 in this index is largely in line with the broader FinTech rankings collated in our recent “Global FinTech Hub Rankings” article. With regards to the four pillars, the dichotomy between “Availability of Solutions” and “Propensity to Adopt” sticks out in Japan’s case, with a ranking of #2 for the former and #35 for the latter. The bridging of the gap between theory and practice might be inhibited by a low score (#22) on “Government and Market Support”, a void that the recently created Digital Agency is certainly meant to address.
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