“It didn’t go unnoticed in Frankfurt that Visa and Mastercard suspended operations in Russia in March 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine……Thirteen of the 20 countries in the euro have no domestic card scheme. You use an international operator, or you pay in cash.”
It hasn’t gone unnoticed that the US is threatening to invade an EU country’s (Denmark) territory, either. Would a future President Trump or President Vance threaten to shut down European financial infrastructure if it opposes an annexation of Greenland? Who knows, but better to take away that opportunity for leverage.
The plan is that you can link it to your bank account or open a special account at post offices throughout the EU. There will be phone apps for payments and digital Euro debit cards. Visa/Mastercard & Apple/Google Pay typically charge 3% fees; the digital Euro will have none. That will ensure it is speedily adopted by retailers and quickly supplants the US providers. Also worth noting its technology will be 100% European only, leaving zero vulnerability/leverage to non-Europeans.
Improvements are incremental. Expecting perfect is stupid.
Besides, there’s a card.
It’s not an improvement. An improvement would be to offer EU-wide exactly what iDEAL was in the Netherlands. There was no need to change anything about the iDEAL system, no need for an extra app, no need for another card, just your regular bank account and any web browser + whatever transaction number solution you had.
This proposal is not an improvement, it’s another step into a totalitarian regime where every single transaction is tracked by the war criminal and pedo-criminal monsters in our governments.
The wallet is supposed to be tracking free and offline, without an account at a bank. That’s an improvement.
We already have offline and without a bank account, it’s called cash. Also, offline & without a bank account can be stolen.
Yes, and cash online is famously difficult.
If you don’t want to lose the digital cash, use the anonymous card they propose.