The European Banking Federation (EBF) has shared its vision for the future of digital money, particularly the retail digital euro, in a paper released on March 28. The paper, which expressed the EBF’s values of stability and privacy, called for closer public-private partnership and a framework for permanent high-level engagement. The EBF ecosystem vision emphasized the role of the private sector, proposing an ecosystem containing the digital euro, a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), and bank-issued money tokens.
The digital euro would have three levels, with a European Central Bank role and two industry levels, with the latter developed and operated by the private sector. Bank-issued money tokens would serve business needs such as automated industrial processes that use smart contracts. The EBF represents 33 national banking associations and 3,500 individual banks.
