Europe to get digital euro in 2029 – independent of Visa and Mastercard

https://www.upday.com/nl/binnenland/europa-krijgt-digitale-euro-in-2029-los-van-visa-en-mastercard/18h3vj0

by goldstarflag

43 comments

  1. The European Central Bank (ECB) wants to start a trial with the digital euro in 2027. If the trial is successful, the digital currency could be officially introduced in 2029. The schedule depends on a legislative framework that European governments and the European Parliament must agree on next year.

    ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone presented the project on Thursday as a broader goal than just technical innovation. ‘This is not just a technical project, but a joint effort to make the European monetary system future-proof,’ Cipollone said. The digital euro should make Europe less dependent on American payment companies such as Visa and Mastercard.

    The Dutch Central Bank (DNB) emphasises the urgency of a public digital payment method. ‘As payment habits evolve and cash payments decline in favour of digital transactions, the need for a public digital means of payment alongside cash has become increasingly urgent,’ the central bank explains.

    The plans have been met with objections from privacy advocates, who fear that governments will gain too much insight into citizens’ spending habits. Outgoing Finance Minister Eelco Heinen (VVD) emphasised last month that the digital euro must offer guaranteed privacy and ‘never be programmable’.

    The ECB has been working on a digital counterpart to cash for years. The digital euro is intended to complement physical money, not replace it.

  4. So what I understand is (and please correct me if I am wrong):

    That it is going to be a third money system, separate from the other two, cash and commercial bank money, and will be interchangable with the two. But the long term plan is that the other two will gradually disappear only leaving the CBDC.

    It is like a bank acccount issued by the central bank, meaning it is alway guaranteed and you cannot lose your money like with the icesave bankrupcy.

    Sounds great right? Well no, this digital euro gives them FULL control. They can decide to issue negative interest if they think the economy needs a boost, and they intend to do so. They could even decide who can spend his money on what. Of course ‘they have no intention’ of doing that, but the framework for them to do it is being put in place with this.

  5. A way for EU to censor stuff themselves right from home. There’s no guarantee that this scheme won’t end up like Visa and Mastercard censoring or closing down private businesses because they sell legal products, like anime & manga stores in Japan, Pixiv, Patreon.

  7. these claims of censorship, monitoring are nonsensical. We already live in a world in which all our communications, payments, can be traced, and leveraged against us. The matter is:

    do we want to entrust this enormous power to institutions that are borne out of our democratic processes, and that are subjected to powerful conventions and bodies safeguarding our fundamental rights (namely the European Convention on Human Rights).

    or, do we deem preferable to send these data to opaque and private companies whose compliance to said frameworks will always be subjugated to the desire of the US government for extraterritorial shenanigans? Is it acceptable that, tomorrow, should sanctions be pronounced by the executive branch of the US, for things as subversive as prosectuing crimes against humanity or advocating for freedom of conscience, those people could lose access to their means of payment since Visa and Mastercard would comply?

    I have bigger faith in the ECB, the ECHR, european strength in numbers than I have towards Visa, Mastercard, the US government and its ability to coerce national governments into ceding their data.

  8. Makes you wonder if those Italian stores with severe tax evasion issues is going to survive with this change.

  9. The digital euro is completely necessary for European sovereignty and needs to be introduced as soon as humanly possible. Hope the trials and tests are successful.

  10. Purely digital currency will be a huge step in the wrong direction.

    Now the state can earmark what you can buy, where you can buy, how long your money stays valid.

    Saving will be come a choice the state can make for you, this is bad on all fronts.

  13. USA proved we can’t trust them with anything, why should we let them see all our payments?

    EU should be standalone and independant of outsiders like China and USA.

  17. They better prepare to do that in less then a year, with the current US-regime doing crazy and hostile stuff however they like.

  18. comment section full of bots praising implementation of CBDC, other people have no opinion and knowledge and so they adopt the comment with the upvotes.

  19. This is essentially crypto. No thanks, we already have Bitcoin and unlike this monstrosity it’s decentralized.

    I hope this CBDC fails.

  20. I hope it succeeds…give Europeans more control of their money rather than the shadowy directors of VISA and Mastercard and their constituent members.

  22. How can Visa and Mastercard work without a Digital Dollar yet their competition would necessarily have to be Digital Euro?

    Why can’t Europe have a similar payment system without the Digital Euro?

  23. All for the digital euro. Hopefully it will be available in European countries not using the euro.

  24. If the whole argument here is not more control from the EU government and less dependency on US, why would not EU create alternative payment systems against Visa/Mastercard instead of enrolling this chinese shit?

  28. Fantastic, keep European money in Europe. Strengthen our economy and our partners

  29. I don’t get what that would mean exactly.

    Like, we could have a credit card with no visa or Mastercard on it (so not using their networks), but ECB or whatever ?

  30. use something like QRIS, everyone can pay from their phone, no need NFC, just cheap chinese android phone with camera is good enough. And yes, you guys can be independent from anyone, you can pay from your own currency, straight from saving account.

  32. Maybe if these morons were not constantly making sure that cash becomes less viable option this project wouldn’t exist

  33. Will it be called an “e-Euro” or “D-Euro”, “Digi-Euro”, “Euro-Coin”?

  35. We could settle discussion about privacy if only people knew about ZKP. Enough to say that it is possible to make a digital system where government owns the data and can validate it but can’t access it (without some permission).

    Please update if you want to spread this message

  38. As long as this isn’t an excuse to do away with cash entirely (looking at YOU, netherlands), because having my entire livelihood go down the drain in the event of a tech outage is not something I feel like ever experiencing.
    Unlikely to ever happen, you say? Funny thing, this month alone both Amazon and Microsoft cloud infrastructure went tits up for unexplained reasons, the latter just this week. Google in Europe earlier in the summer.

    While I’m aware digital banking and payment systems run on different infrastructure, I would also like to point to the fact that cold, hard cash does not run out of batteries the way your phone might, nor does it suffer errors from wear the way a card’s chip might. And it’s only a matter of time until the infrastructure for electronic and digital banking is either outdated or moved.

    Or held hostage, as was demonstrated recently, and is the reason Europe is going for this in the first place.

    TLDR: Overall, a net positive, I just hope this doesn’t push other nations into following the Netherland’s sketchy-ass venture into an electronic-only economy.

  39. I will stick to physical cash thank you. I was there when entire Portugal lost electricity for a day….it it wasn’t for physical cash in hand we would have been in trouble 

  40. A lot of people on these comments have not been paying attention. People have warned against this change to central bank currency for years, and you are cheering it on thinking it will be good.

  43. Yay, let’s spy and tax everyone and lock them up in every purchase attempt they make after reaching an arbitrary quota in every single aspect of life.

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