ECB’s president, Christine Lagarde, has opened up the matter of a digital euro to public consultation. One of the questions was, “Do Europeans want a digital euro that does not rely on intermediaries?”
“As Europeans are increasingly turning to digital in the ways they spend, save and invest, we should be prepared to issue a digital euro, if needed. I’m also keen to hear your views on it,” she tweeted recently, along with a link to a survey.
Lagarde said in a subsequent video that the survey means that “consumers and Europeans can actually express their preference and tell us whether they would be happy to use a digital euro just in the way they use a euro coin or a euro banknote, knowing that it is central bank money that is available and that they can rely upon.”
“We are still in the review and consideration stage,” she added.
The survey asks the respondents to rank their preferences for a digital euro and then answer the questions like:
“What services, functionalities or use cases do you think are feasible and should be considered when developing a digital euro?”
ECB’s survey is describing “two approaches we can take to make a digital euro work, one that requires intermediaries to process the payment and one that doesn’t.”
In the first, the ECB describes a digital euro that “has no need for the central bank or an intermediary to be involved in the processing of every single payment.”
First, the ECB describes a digital euro that “has no need for the central bank or an intermediary to be involved in the processing of every single payment.”
The survey would “feel closer to cash payments, but in digital form – you would be able to use the digital euro even when not connected to the internet, and your privacy and personal data would be better protected.”
In the next approach, intermediaries will record the transactions. The first takes a leaf out of crypto’s book: Bitcoin was built on ending reliance on the intermediaries.
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