"The current phase will last for two years, finishing at the end of 2025, at which point the Governing Council will decide whether to move to the next phase of preparations and, if so, define its scope and duration."

It's a pity that it is still so far off, because reading though the description, it seems to be intended as a very secure, very private way of paying digitally - the intention is to make payments directly from person to person, with no interactions with your bank.

"Cash-like" is the term they use. I could get behind that for sure.

[–] HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Wero does it in France, Belgium and Germany if I am not mistaken

[–] SrMono@feddit.org 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

November 2025 is still quite a stretch and I’m sure as any good European project this will be postponed 😬

[–] elvith@feddit.org 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

There were reports about "Digital Euro" a while back, before all that chaos ensued. If they would have started this now, I'd have said that November 25 is quite ambitious. Depending on the current state of this project and how long they've been working on it, it might not be too ambitious. Still, it's a huge task and there are many ways how this might get delayed.

Also having a payment network online is one step. Having businesses and banks adopt and implement it, is another. Even if this will start in November, I doubt it'll be a full fledged alternative on day one and it will still take some months to years to get it accepted (almost) everywhere. Also don't forget, that - if they want to implement Credit Cards - banks might need to issue new cards to their customers. I don't think, they'd swap them out all at once. More likely they'll swap them out, when you need a new card (validity date over, stolen, broken,...). This will slow down adoption. Issuing virtual cards on your phone that support this network might help for a faster adoption, though.

[–] takeheart@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

The European Central Bank has been working on this for many years. The current crisis is not the cause but may significantly speed up resources dedicated and raise urgency of the process.

It's been some time since I read thru the proposals of the European Central Bank. But a digital euro isn't just a replacement for a credit card system. It's a difference system altogether where transactions are directly cleared with the central bank (or a certified agent) online.

[–] Lembot_0001@lemm.ee 14 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I heard (not a specialist, so can't check if that is true) that European VISA fully belongs to European banks and doesn't create any profit to US banks.

[–] Zoldyck@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago

It's likely about control and ownership

[–] Renohren@lemmy.today 8 points 2 days ago

There was once a VISA Europe branch that was separate from VISA .inc, it's not the case anymore since 2015 when VISA bought back ViSA Europe.

There are countries where debit cards are also compatible with a local system and in those countries, banks make the POS devices use that local system by default (for cost cuttings) if the card is compatible and only use Visa/MasterCard if the card is not compatible.

[–] kungen@feddit.nu 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There's normally two different fees when doing a card payment: the interchange fee (Visa, Mastercard, and the couple others), and the processing fee (Square, Stripe, PayPal, whatever).

Nowadays, interchange fees are capped to like 0.3% in the EU, but this wasn't always the case. And for non-EU, the interchange fees are usually much higher.

So even if both a store and their payment processor is EU-based, Visa/MC is still giving at least 0.3% of your payment sum in most cases.

[–] thijsje@social.vivaldi.net 1 points 1 day ago

@SrMono I think this is an improvement.

[–] Thatoo@mastodon.zaclys.com -3 points 1 day ago

@SrMono
I don't want digital euro, I don't want credit, I don't want more debt money!
It leads to capitalism leading to environmental and social crisis.

I want free money!

I don't want more money creation privileges. I don't want more control from banks on what we can/should do with our exchange tool.

I want us all to be in charge and controlling our exchange tool!
Let's all co-create and co-manage our own money!

Let's use #g1 , the first #monnaielibre.
https://monnaie-libre.fr/

[–] melroy@mastodon.melroy.org -2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

@SrMono owh noooooooo. This is actually bad for your privacy. Just saying.

[–] nitefox@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago

Implying American companies are better for your privacy is quite absurd