Europe preps Digital Euro to enter circulation in 2029 The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) has decided the bloc needs a digital version of the Euro, and ordered work that could see it enter circulation in 2029. Europe initiated a “preparation phase” for a Digital Euro in November 2023. Yesterday, the ECB said that effort succeeded. ECB President Christine …
Nonsense.
I can pay everything I buy with my Visa. I haven't used cash since COVID.
What is this bullshit ? What new Big Brother scheme are they trying to push on us ?
Don't know and don't give a damn. I don't need it, I don't want it, and I won't use it.
Go fuck yourselves.
Have you ever looked at the charges imposed on traders by the credit card companies? These drive up the costs for consumers. In addition, being based in the US, they can be forced by the American government to provide data or even stop the service.
With recent political events in the US, other regions including the EU now have more impetus to preserve sovereignty within the economic/payments space. MasterCard and Visa dominate payments, especially in the West and they're subject to US law, so the EU wants a home grown alternative. Take a look at Wero, this is an EU based digital wallet that's rolling out and gives an alternative to Visa and MC. Wero is limited to a few countries with more planned but probably won't cover the whole EU (it's private, backed by FIs). In Ireland, Zippay is coming. It's not a digital wallet but it doesn't use Visa or MC either (A2A payments). In Asia there are other schemes with similar objectives like Project Nexus (more focused on cross border than Wero but also removes the need for MC and Visa). There's a trend...
In the EU, Wero and Zippay go some way to boosting sovereignty but Digital Euro is planned to be EU wide and is backed by the ECB. By design (unlike Wero or Zippay) it will have offline capability and will support payer/payee privacy (like cash). Adjust your pinch of salt according to your own level of skepticism with that one. On the plus side, cash isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable (unless you're in the UAE) so if privacy is your concern, you always have that option.
Gather 'round ladies and gentlemen and witness your average modern "savvy" consumer:
Happily pays for everything including toiletries, travel and other essentials using foreign Visa, the payment system which tracks every detail of what you buy, where, when and from whom you buy it and which certainly doesn't report any of those details to the central government body that has claimed the explicit authority, above and beyond those of many so-called authoritarian regimes, to request exactly that data with severe restrictions against informing anyone that it has done so.
Doesn't want local Visa because it would be a "big brother scheme".
How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?
It's not local VISA.
If you have government (actually central banks ) owning the digital currency it will not stop at mere ownership for the benefit of the people. Listen to Carsten whatever of the BIS rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of being able to control how money is spent. And why is currency controlled by central banks? Hasn't exactly kept us out of trouble and we have to pay interest on the QE.
I think this paragraph has the answer:
"Privacy advocates argue that every digital transaction creates records, so it could be possible to track a consumer’s use of a CBDC."
"Track a consumers use of CBDC" is the reason why "they" are telling us that "we" need a digital currency.
Transactions already being done electronically in the EU are mostly likely subject to the whims of Trump. It could be worse: Musk has threatened to make X into a payment system / bank / black hole. The sooner there is an alternative to that available to everybody the better.
This is not a new currency, this is a new infrastructure deployed at Europe level, independent from MasterCard/Visa and that won't fail when AWS or Azure are down.
There are already local versions, like in France (the CB logo you find on some cards issued there side by side with MC/Visa).
And perhaps they will add some perks like preventing politicians, their assistants, and their extended family, from receiving bribes and buying cocaine?
"that won't fail when AWS or Azure are down"
You are joking right? Oh ok it might not fail when AWS or Azure are down it will fail when the central bank cocks up, gets hacked or want it to fail. "It is the cyber polygon" said in the best Herr Flick voice.
I use cash by default for all local transactions, I see zero benefit in feeding the monsters that are Visa and Mastercard. Most of the local small business's prefer this and this is doubly true in Portugal where many if not the majority of small business's don't/won't use electronic trading owing to the costs.
No it is best to use cash. Everything that the state wants us to do becomes convenient. Want to go on holiday - get a jab. Want to use a government service, digital id. Want to withdraw cash - KYC. A fool believes it's for our benefit. Do what your government says and life will be a bowl of roses, haven't you noticed?
One of the interesting takeaways from the recent Iberian power failure was that even shops that only took cash were mostly unable to operate because their PoS equipment wasn't working so we've already passed the tipping point when it comes to operational resilience. Banking costs of all kinds have traditionally been high in Portugal and there are a lot of informal barriers to external competition, but the EU is keen to see that change. Portugal is in a reasonably good position (e.g. with MultiBanco/SIBS) to offer low-cost digital transactions and if it doesn't it's going to be steamrollered.
Why not create processes that don't stop when power or Internet fail?
There is a lot of war talk in Europe what do they think will happen in a large European war? I know it's rare but imagine a large natural disaster too. They happen eventually and if we insist on everything reliant on digital only we're extremely vulnerable to ending up back in the stoneage.
Interesting that my German CE card works fine anywhere in Germany, but is being replaced (at the whim of the bank) by a mastercard which theoretically works anywhere. Though my wife's card has already been replaced, and doesn't work anywhere except Germany. Must talk to the bank about that.
So I end up with a three-tier solution: UK credit and debit cards in the UK (in Germany they have this ridiculous idea that you should pay a monthly fee for a credit card, even if unused!) and a Wise pre-loaded debit card for anywhere else. And a handful of cash just in case; that's country dependent.
I don't miss the days when a trip across Europe involved taking traveller's cheques or buying a basketful of francs, guilders, marks, krone...
Or pay them off in full each month. Credit cards are some of the worst sources of credit (albeit not as bad as payday lenders or your local gangster). I find credit cards are convenient as they cost me nothing to use and provide a secure payment tool (as well as providing insurance against a supplier not delivering - as happened last year when a large builder went bust after I’d made an upfront payment for the materials (having made that payment on a credit card, the full amount was refunded by the bank).
As others have noted, some shops and businesses have dispensed with cash transactions - it takes away the need for holding and processing cash, something that is not risk or cost free. It makes cashing up at the end of the day a lot easier (something you won’t appreciate if you’ve never had to do it), not trips to the bank to pay in takings and get change (again only appreciated if you’ve had to do it - especially as local bank branches are impersonating hens’ teeth). Transaction fees are not negligible but are predictable and can readily be managed.
"As for paying for credit cards – you can either pay the fee or have higher interest payments."
When I lived in Germany the credit card that Deutsche Bank offered required any transactions on it to be automatically paid *in full* the following month (unlike UK credit cards) - so it was effectively a one-month-delayed debit card.
"I'm assuming that the EU wants to provide a replacement of the service currently provided by Mastercard and Visa for debit cards, maybe also for credit cards."
You don't need a new digital version of currency to do that though - you need new European based payment processors to do the same money transfers as VISA and MasterCard currently do. It can use the Euro in the same way as they do, it doesn't need a new currency setting up.
Digital currency entirely in the hands of the children that brought you the Euro. And it doesnt really matter which government, I wouldnt trust any of them to have full control of the currency I have. The price of gold shows the value people place on government currencies at the current level of control. This is where people start finding appeal in other options such as bitcoin.
100% correct.
I'd love to see a distributed bitcoin replace fiat (digital or paper) but I can't see that being allowed and you could still stick filters infront of the on & off ramps. So, let's keep paper and maybe add options including current digital, bitcoin & precious metals. Basically the less control single entities have the better.
@AC
"I'd love to see a distributed bitcoin replace fiat (digital or paper) but I can't see that being allowed and you could still stick filters infront of the on & off ramps. So, let's keep paper and maybe add options including current digital, bitcoin & precious metals. Basically the less control single entities have the better."
Some places have already blocked or restricted bitcoin. However for your precious metals comment you should take a look at TallyMoney. A gold backed currency you can spend on a debit card.
I don't get it. It's "digital" like in "bank accounts and credit cards" or it's digital as in "blockchain and funny money shit"?
Becuse if it's the first one, then good to have some sort of credit card provider that is not US based. If it's the second, better avoid it entirely.
There used to be one. The technical standard for cards and readers was called "EMV" where the E stood for Eurocard. Eurocard was taken over by Mastercard although the brand name is still used in some countries.
Most money is digital these days. We move numbers from one bank account to another.
The digital Euro will be programmable which means :
1 - Your money can be set to expire at a certain date
2 - Your money can be programmed to prevent you from spending on things government does not approve
3 - All your money will be tied even closer to your identity, irrespective of what kind of payment platform you use
My advice ? I have none, you can start panicking now.
At least in my country something like that has existed for decades. Lunch vouchers are a tax-reduced component of paychecks, depending on your employment contract; they have an expiration date of some months and can only be spent on meals at restaurants or foodstuffs at supermarkets. Recently they've gone digital, which means either using a smartcard or yet another damn app on my smartphone.
The important part, those vouchers are an additional part of my pay and they're entirely optional: I can opt out of them and be no worse off than before (the money can only go to my pension fund in order to keep the reduced corporate tax rate, there's no option for regular cash).
I can see similar restrictions applied to potential future stimulus checks: you spend the amount in the way you're directed or you lose it, but either way you're no worse off as it's free money. The fear of employers doing the same to regular paychecks IMO is unfounded, that would be tantamount to being paid in company scrip, something that's been illegal since forever.
Perhaps I'm naively optimistic but I don't see all those downsides, then again as a law-abiding individual "having to live on the run from the government" isn't really in my threat model.
> as a law-abiding individual "having to live on the run from the government" isn't really in my threat model.
It's not just you that needs to have nothing to hide.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/17/crossed_wires_iioc_case/
And I can assure you from personal experience that there is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty. Quite the opposite. America got (past tense, sadly) one thing right: it is not "your" country unless the people running it are afraid of you.
The taxmen have already access to all your transaction...
They are not numerous enough to process it fortunately, but with the help of AI they will know when you leave the country to stash your funds in a tax paradise.
This is currently being tested with benefits in UK, removing them to anybody who leaves the country without coming back.
Of course there are some glitches with the non-border between IE and NI, but this will be solved by giving back NI to IE next year.
Recently looked at offshore banks and even they report on your account to your government unless you risk one that is in some unstable jurisdiction. The signs are so dire I think this government might just reach in and take my lifetime savings I've been keeping for retirement.
I went away for a week a while back and I forgot to take a pile of cash (sterling) for exchange locally. I ended up having to use a credit card to pay for some bills and took out money for others which would not take a card. I ended up paying about 15% of the total in charges.
Absolutely fuck the providers of credit cards utterly. Even more so the fact that they are run by the US. Been using more cash and taking it out of my account for local use and will do more in future, particularly when there are more outages and problems with online payment services. I am not a huge fan of the EU but if they bring out a credit payment system I will use them any day over providers that are US based.
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