The digital euro is not intended as a substitute for existing products, Bundesbank Executive Board member Burkhard Balz underscored at a joint Bundesbank-Oesterreichische Nationalbank conference. It should serve as an additional offering, he said, which gives the public access to central bank money in a future digital world.

At the conference, financial industry, trade and consumer protection experts discussed the future of the euro. They talked about the potential impact of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) on everyday payments and the financial markets. Petia Niederländer, Director, Payments, Risk Monitoring and Financial Literacy Department at the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, and Alexandra Hachmeister, head of the Bundesbank's Directorate General Digital Euro, each moderated a panel. 

The digital euro in everyday payments

The discussion focused on the question of how the digital euro needed to be designed in order to create added value for the public, retailers and financial service providers. Consumer protection aspects were amongst the issues discussed by the experts, who stressed that a digital euro needed the capability to integrate seamlessly into existing payment systems. Banking industry representatives, in particular, emphasised that a digital euro would be advantageous only if no new infrastructure needed to be created for it. 

Central banks and the private sector, according to Petia Niederländer, bore joint responsibility with regard to everyday payments: We must jointly ensure that consumers’ confidence in payment infrastructures is maintained, whether this concerns digital payments, cash or new digital currencies such as the digital euro. In that vein, the experts also discussed the role retailers and banks play in fostering acceptance of the digital euro.

Digital money in the financial markets

Another topic the joint conference focused on was the usefulness of central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the wholesale area, especially in the securities sector. The participants saw CBDC as being capable of transforming securities settlement, also using///with the added help of distributed ledger technology (DLT). In that context, one of the other main points the experts looked at was the current avenues being explored in the Eurosystem. They nearly unanimously came out in favour of the trigger solution, developed by the Bundesbank and currently in the testing phase, which could potentially contribute, very soon and with low overhead costs, to digitalising the issuance of securities, some of which is still in paper form.