ECB to prioritize P2P and online payments in digital euro rollout

The European Central Bank (ECB) has precocious declared that its integer euro enrollment should prioritize e-commerce and person-to-person payments, pinch remaining usage cases to travel successful nan 2nd shape of its cardinal slope integer rate (CBDC) development.

Indeed, peer-to-peer and e-commerce payments presume seniority successful nan series of usage lawsuit rollout for nan integer euro successful nan first release, followed by different contexts, specified arsenic beingness stores and authorities payments, successful nan second, according to nan ‘Rollout attack for nan integer euro’ document published connected February 22.

According to nan ECB’s integer euro task team: 

“Multiple usage cases are required to reside nan assortment of end-user needs and marketplace gaps crossed [euro area (EA)] countries, responding to a scenery pinch divers costs behaviors and preferences.”

In their view, specified a “staggered approach” has aggregate applicable advantages, arsenic it would lend to “ensuring a soft end-user costs acquisition (i.e., gradual knowing and take of nan different usage cases and technologies by end-users)” and “reduce nan implementation complexities associated to (e.g., rolling retired astatine pan-EA level).”

Earlier successful September 2022, ECB president Christine Lagarde commented connected nan institution’s plans to unveil a integer euro, suggesting that it should beryllium “borderless, it shouldn’t beryllium borderline, and it should surely not transverse nan line, which is why it should beryllium regulated and decently supervised.”

ECB’s cognition toward crypto

Elsewhere, nan ECB has demonstrated a reluctant cognition towards nan cryptocurrency sector, arsenic it sent retired a warning to eurozone countries successful July 2022 astir nan dangers of regulators getting up of nan Regulation connected Markets successful Crypto-Assets (MiCA) rule that isn’t expected to travel into afloat effect earlier 2024.

In January 2023, nan ECB’s executive Fabio Panetta urged for nan regularisation of investing successful cryptocurrencies for illustration gambling owed to, successful his view, their “speculative” quality and deficiency of “any socially aliases economically useful function,” arsenic Finbold reported.

More recently, nan ECB supervisors suggested that banks successful nan European Union (EU) should commencement applying caps connected Bitcoin (BTC) holdings earlier nan world regulatory model group retired by nan Basel Committee connected Banking Supervision (BCBS) becomes legally binding, citing imaginable risks from nan crypto assets spilling complete into nan banking sector.