By Valentina Za<\/p>\n
MILAN, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Introducing the digital euro could cost European banks between 4 billion and 6 billion euros ($4.7-$7.1 billion) spread over four \u200cyears, a senior European Central Bank policymaker said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
ECB Governing Council member \u200cPiero Cipollone also said the new digital\u2011only central bank currency which the ECB is working on is estimated \u200bto cost around 1.3 billion euros to set up.<\/p>\n
Operational costs would then be about 300 million euros, he added, without specifying whether this figure refers to an annual amount.<\/p>\n
The ECB is awaiting European Union legislation to issue the digital euro, which it sees as a \u200cway to keep public money \u2060relevant in a digital economy, unify Europe’s fragmented payments landscape and curb the role of non-EU providers to protect the bloc’s monetary sovereignty \u2060and economic security.<\/p>\n
BANKS WILL BE ABLE TO RECOUP COSTS, CIPOLLONE SAYS<\/p>\n
“Estimates we’ve come up with based on indications we received from banks point to implementation costs of between 4 and 6 \u200bbillion (euros) over \u200bfour years: that is about 3% of what \u200bthey spend every year on IT\u2011system \u200cmaintenance,” Cipollone said.<\/p>\n
He was speaking to an Italian parliamentary committee on banks on the digital euro project, which he oversees under his payments remit at the ECB.<\/p>\n
Banks will be able to make up the costs through the fees they receive from merchants on the digital euro services they will provide.<\/p>\n
It will be banks that give users the smartphone \u200capplication needed to pay with digital euros.<\/p>\n
Banks, however, won’t \u200bhave to deduct from the merchants’ fees the \u200bcosts they normally bear to remunerate \u200bprivate payments networks because the ECB won’t charge for its network service.<\/p>\n
The \u200cECB is currently at work to \u200bselect lenders that are \u200binterested in taking part in the pilot phase of the digital euro ahead of its official launch in 2029.<\/p>\n
Merchants, in turn, will save money because there will \u200bbe a cap on the \u200cfees charged on digital euro payments and the cap will be below \u200bwhat international firms such as Mastercard or Visa charge at present.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8488 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Valentina Za; Editing by David Holmes)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Valentina Za MILAN, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Introducing the digital euro could cost European banks between 4…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[47336,15683,2000,299,5187,133309,14441,34454,31224],"class_list":{"0":"post-774878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-digital-economy","9":"tag-digital-euro","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-banks","14":"tag-european-central-bank","15":"tag-euros","16":"tag-piero-cipollone"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116097445149006166","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}