..a digital euro would contribute to our strategic autonomy and economic efficiency by offering a European means of payment that could be used for any digital payment, would meet Europe’s societal objectives and would be based on a European infrastructure.
A digital euro would enable Europeans to use public money for digital
payments throughout the euro area – just like they can use cash for
physical payments.
Bringing central bank money into the digital
era is a logical step as payments become increasingly digitalised. And
this is critical for two main reasons.
First, we need to preserve
the role of public money as the anchor of the payments system in order
to ensure the smooth coexistence, the convertibility and the
complementarity of the various forms that money takes. A strong anchor
is needed to protect the singleness of money, monetary sovereignty and
the integrity of the financial system.
Second, a digital euro
would contribute to our strategic autonomy and economic efficiency by
offering a European means of payment that could be used for any digital
payment, would meet Europe’s societal objectives and would be based on a
European infrastructure.
We will design the digital euro in a way that makes it attractive to users, who would like to use it to pay anywhere.
Giving legal tender status to the digital euro would make this
possible, and it will be decided by you, the co-legislators. It would
also help to achieve the network effects that are key to the success of
payment solutions.
We will also strive for the highest standards of privacy
and aim to contribute to financial inclusion and foster digital
innovation, including as regards the programmability of payments.
As
for implementation, we are working to minimise the time to market,
costs, risks and ecological footprint associated with the digital euro.
In
particular, we will make sure that the digital euro builds on the
experience of financial intermediaries in consumer-facing services, does
not crowd out private means of payment, and preserves financial
stability. And this is the aspect that I will focus on today: the
potential impact of a digital euro on the financial system.
The digital euro and the evolution of the financial system
As
we explore the design of the digital euro, we are not only looking at
the payments landscape of today – we are in fact also considering how it
might evolve in the future.
Imagine a world in which the central
bank continues to offer only cash, but people increasingly prefer to
pay digitally and the only digital forms of money available to them are
private ones.
In
such a world, central bank money would lose its key role in payments,
and it would not be possible to ensure the complementarity and
convertibility of public and private money.
The entire monetary and financial sector would be deprived of its
anchor – central bank money – and would be exposed to potential
instability.
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