The ECB published a report with the results of its latest CBDC tests and announced the decision on when the digital euro will be issued.
The European Central Bank published a report with the results of its latest CBDC tests. For her part, the president of the entity, Christine Lagarde, said that a decision on the issuance of the digital euro will arrive by the end of 2023.
The European Central Bank (ECB) may be nearing a verdict on the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the European bloc. During the last exercise, various aspects of digital currency were investigated, such as its use offline and various instances of interoperability with existing payment systems.
2021 was the year in which the ECB began the investigation phase of its CBDC. The last prototyping exercise was developed between July 2022 and February 2023, in collaboration with the tech giant Amazon.
In the latest report, the central bank admits that the issuance of a digital euro can promote innovationalthough he seems more skeptical about the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT), such as Blockchain.
Offline CBDC payments appeared to be among the most problematic. The monetary authority said it was seeking to gain a “deeper understanding of how the combination of hardware and software protocol could prevent double spending and ensure settlement firmness and non-repudiation.”
Although the evidence appeared to show that “Online and offline digital euro prototypes can be interoperable even if they are based on different data models and technical designs.”
Christine Lagarde, the ECB president, previously said that a decision by the authorities on issuing such a system could come as early as October 2023.
Source: Ambito
