It will be interesting to see how it works Vs normal card transactions etc. Will it be mandatory to accept? Will it end up going through Visa/Mastercard anyway, or will it create a competitor?
Sounds like a EU centralized version of venmo
Brazil has a thing called PIX. Universal (bank to bank), instant, 24/7, free of charge (except for business, but the fees are way lower than credit card transaction fees). It doesn't use blockhain, crypto or none of that, and it simply works. I think every bank and financial institution is required to provide PIX to their customers, and you can easily send money to anyone using a registered phone number, email, CPF (social security number (and no, we aren't as paranoid as americans about it)) or a randomly generated key.
PIX entered beta testing in late 2020, and soon enough was widely available in the country, to absolute approval. It's so easy to open bank accounts and have a PIX key that even homeless people with access to internet (which is also easy to get) have PIX and ask for money through it. Physical money is fading fast and people are loving it in Brazil.
Most EU countries also have their own version of PIX, like the Netherlands has iDeal. The EU digital coin is something else. It’s basically digital cash. You load up your digital wallet with money from your bank account and then you can pay in stores or transfer coins to another person’s wallet without having banks act as an intermediary.
This means that the role of commercial banks is not canceled with the launch of the single digital currency, but they will still be an important part of the ecosystem.
[...] a ceiling on the liquidity that citizens will be able to maintain in digital euro, in the order of 2,000 or 3,000 euros per user. The goal is for the digital euro to be used purely as a means of exchange and not as a means of accumulating wealth.
The benefits of the digital euro include the immediacy and security of transactions – [...] instant payments [...] made in a few seconds
A very important advantage of the digital euro is also the zero cost of its use, putting an end to the – harsh in some cases – commissions that banks currently impose on direct payments
Maybe I'm talking from a privileged country, but none of this would benefit me at all in my country as the banking system already does all of this. It's a bit disappointing that they seem to be intentionally kneecapping the digital euro so that they can placate private banks. Although I wouldn't mind what they're doing if they also provided a government run bank that didn't shoo away customers if they didn't have the right risk profile, that competed with private banks (e.g. Norway's state-run consumer bank exists alongside private ones). For example, legal sex workers are often pushed out by private banks.
If it's reasonably private and a third-party morality police isn't deciding what you should be allowed to spend your money on, it'd be a big improvement over the US system.
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