I'm not gonna use CBDC because they'll get hooked up to digital id, no matter what they're "promising" right now. This is just another shitcoin no one asked for.
This seems different than a credit card account though? I buy everything with my credit cards because I don't want to swipe my bank card at random merchants.
I hope that they don't fall into the same trap that a lot of EU projects fall in to: only solving one problem.
My VISA card is not only a convenient payment method, it also forces ATM operators to give me cash without any extra fees. In Germany the EC card used to be THE way of paying with a card but you had to go to the ATMs of your bank, otherwise there would be sometimes pretty ridiculous fees. The kicker was that the fees were set by your home bank.
Add to that the ease of use online as well as in shops and it's easy to see that this is not going to be easy. I do root for them though, to do better than Wero.
??? Doesn't Europe already have Wero (iDEAL in Netherlands)? That's a system for making online payments. Money gets directly debited from your bank account.
I've always found credit cards stupid. You just want to pay for something, and then suddenly you have a debt. You shouldn't be in debt when you can clearly pay with money you have. Credit card companies advertise with "super easy payments" and "buy now pay later" but at the same time the government warns all the time that "lending money costs money". Also, if your credit card number and CVC get leaked, then anybody can steal any amount of money, and your only recourse is to regularly check your statements and warn the bank within a month. Whereas with Wero/iDEAL you must authorize the exact transaction at that exact amount.
Supposedly, Americans have these "credit card rewards" loyalty program things. Doesn't exist in Europe. You can only pay, you don't get any bonuses. Which makes the only reason to have a credit card is to be able to pay in web shops that don't accept Wero/iDEAL.
How does digital euro replace credit cards? That's basically the same as direct debit. It doesn't address the reason why I use credit cards.
I use credit cards as a proxy for my bank accounts. I know that my issuing bank will protect me from all fraud so I don't have to worry about losing money if I buy something from a fraudulent merchant. I also know I can do things like chargebacks if I have to.
None of this is addressed by digital currency, it's basically like using cash which is haphazard today when there are so many scams everywhere around the world.
This is interesting and poignant less because of the digital currency aspect and more because of the geopolitics. In a world where technology touches everything, tech itself becomes political.
The boulder that is de-Americanization has rolled too far downhill now and gained too much momentum; it can no longer be stopped.
The two thirds of Americans who either voted for Trump or couldn't be bothered to vote against him because they aReN't PoLiTiCaL are going to have to come to terms with their new place in the world one way or another. The US is no longer seen as a stable military partner[0], nor a stable economic partner as evidenced by TFA. It's easy to blame Trump but he is merely a symptom of the root cause, which is the attitudes shared by a huge number of Americans.
America will cease to be (and in some cases already has ceased to be) the world's epicenter of geopolitical soft power, scientific innovation, and financial clout. Treaties to which the US is a signatory are not worth the paper they're printed on. The foundations have already been laid, and the de-Americanization trend can't be stopped. For a people so accustomed to feeling like a privileged special class of world citizens, I honestly wonder if the American psyche can handle it. Probably we'll see a wave of people who "never supported Trump in the first place", just like tons of Germans were "never Nazis in the first place" once it became socially unpalatable.
So, congrats, I guess. At least you guys got some people with brown skin deported.
I am hoping this could be utilized by those living in the US who also don't want to use the dollar. The surveillance has grown too large and I don't trust my own money. The IRS requires all transactions sent to them if they total $600 or more on a payment app. Why would I want my money in US dollar when the Euro has vastly more robust protections and less corruption?
> The IRS requires all transactions sent to them if they total $600 or more on a payment app
I regret to inform you that your tax obligations don't disappear just because they're in a different currency. Worse, because you're a US national, they don't disappear even if you're physically in a different country.
On an article like this, I encourage anyone giving an opinion based on their own experience to say what country it's from. (Or have this in their profile.)
How much you wanna bet that digital euro implementations will in practice depend on two US corporations? The EUDI wallet implementations being rolled out seem to so far. (Apple and Google, in case it wasn't obvious.)
> The approval of draft rules by the economic committee of the European Parliament comes after three years of wrangling between the ECB and banks, which have been concerned about deposit outflows and lost revenues and sought to limit the scope of the project.
This kind of thing is why I'm optimistic both about Bitcoin and fiat currencies in third world countries like Brazil and India.
One should also bear in mind that the technical difference between Debit and Credit cards is quite blurry in the EU. Like, a card can officially be of the Debit kind, but have all the features of a Credit card enabled. Which is actually and typically the case.
And for example in Ukraine the situation is exactly the opposite: cards issued are typically Credit cards, but with all features of credit cards turned off which effectively makes them debit cards.
Can someone tell me why the EU doesn’t develop something like RuPay?
Indian UPI gets mentioned a lot, but when Visa, Mastercard didn't agree with data sovereignty rules among other rules, India quickly developed RuPay [0]. Now most debit cards in India are RuPay. CCs stand at 18% share.
They also integrate seamlessly to UPI.
Why doesn’t the EU consider something like that? They want to jump direct to digital currencies? Is that it? Something else?
[0]: Data rules came in 2017/18, RuPay was developed in 2012 iirc. But it got unprecedented push after the rule.
If you were starting from scratch today, though, would you really re-invent credit cards? There was at some point I think a vague plan for a European debit card network (at least one of the national debit card network actually supports foreign issuers on a technical level, though I don't think in practice this was ever implemented), but really, why use the card format, beyond "well, this is already a thing"?
i hope the thing they roll out is a straight copy of pix from brazil. its fast, reliable, cheaper than debit cards and private (not anonymous but only the central bank can see your info). no corporations involved outside of support contracts and no stupid limits to make banks happy like this new proposal.
and there should be a right to use all payment methods in the constitution or whatever the eu equivalent is. all stores must accept digital euro and physical stores also accept cash. crypto shouldnt be a part of the system but protected from being made illegal in any member state, privacy coins especially.
Also clears the way to control how the digital euros can be spent.
No thanks.
Ideal/Wero is good.
Use my credit cards for larger online payments. Mainly because it has insurance and makes it easy to dispute something.
Last year a large Swedish clothing brand didn’t deliver 400 euros worth of clothing. They said they did. I have nothing. Customer service unhelpful. I disputed it with the bank where I have the credit card. The same day it was fixed.
Wero is good? The company which is only reachable by snail mail, whose services are only accessible through devices running operating systems from the American megacorporations Alphabet and Apple (both known for being fined repeatedly by the EU for breaking various laws)? If that's what passes for good, I'd hate to see what you would call mediocre, let alone bad.
I am still not quite sure how this would affect my day-to-day (private) payment experience transaction cost etc.
But is has strategic value for Europe:
> [...] European dependencies in critical technologies. A digital euro could mitigate these developments in the medium term if the infrastructure is mainly operated by European companies and if European payment service providers manage to achieve a leading position in the evolving ecosystem for digital euro services.
Well they already know me. I make about one small payment per quarter in cash, everything else via phone, card or bank transfer.
So I don’t see the day-to-day difference with digital euro, except that the backend seems to have fewer intermediaries (and maybe lower cost for the merchant?). Also it would work in more than one country which is good.
This sounds like "government issue Revolut". Which would be... low-key nice? Not a nefarious scheme, not a revolutionary future of money, just something to replace a certain part of your financial life without tying it to a commercial entity. Which might be appealing to the anti-capitalism segment of Europeans.
I theory it should be more. The ECB claims you will be able to hold and spend a (limited amount of) digital euro offline (without internet connection).
Not really. Euro cash today is paper / plastic banknotes and metal coins. Your account in the bank is not really cash you own, it is more like the banks liability towards you.
If your bank fail, you loose the money you held in the bank (except the insured amount). If you have some cash, that's independent from any private company, and it must be accepted everywhere. Digital Euro should have the advantages of cash and the comfort of electronic payments, too.
Credit cards in Europe are a form of very short term credit: you spend and pay the entire balance on the next month. The is very different from the model in the US, which is designed to keep you in debt forever.
I don't understand why you need a "digital Euro" since debit card transactions are already "digital", and widespread in Europe (Girocard, Carte Bleu, etc.)?
This sounds more like a cross-EU unified payment system/mechanism rather than a "digital currency" (which already exists).
48 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 66.2 ms ] threadBecause nothing speaks freedom more than a crazily centralized digital currency
/s
My VISA card is not only a convenient payment method, it also forces ATM operators to give me cash without any extra fees. In Germany the EC card used to be THE way of paying with a card but you had to go to the ATMs of your bank, otherwise there would be sometimes pretty ridiculous fees. The kicker was that the fees were set by your home bank.
Add to that the ease of use online as well as in shops and it's easy to see that this is not going to be easy. I do root for them though, to do better than Wero.
I've always found credit cards stupid. You just want to pay for something, and then suddenly you have a debt. You shouldn't be in debt when you can clearly pay with money you have. Credit card companies advertise with "super easy payments" and "buy now pay later" but at the same time the government warns all the time that "lending money costs money". Also, if your credit card number and CVC get leaked, then anybody can steal any amount of money, and your only recourse is to regularly check your statements and warn the bank within a month. Whereas with Wero/iDEAL you must authorize the exact transaction at that exact amount.
Supposedly, Americans have these "credit card rewards" loyalty program things. Doesn't exist in Europe. You can only pay, you don't get any bonuses. Which makes the only reason to have a credit card is to be able to pay in web shops that don't accept Wero/iDEAL.
Can we have cars back please? Reliable, decent and good. Not three-cylinders complicated and fragile smartphones-with-wheels etc.
And a landscape with decent non-offending lights, etc.
Oh, and can we have internal documents please? Made by people with well formed brains for people with well formed minds. No NFC.
Since we are here - could I have some usable, decent, for Men, electronic money? No tracking.
They must pay for the damages.
I use credit cards as a proxy for my bank accounts. I know that my issuing bank will protect me from all fraud so I don't have to worry about losing money if I buy something from a fraudulent merchant. I also know I can do things like chargebacks if I have to.
None of this is addressed by digital currency, it's basically like using cash which is haphazard today when there are so many scams everywhere around the world.
The boulder that is de-Americanization has rolled too far downhill now and gained too much momentum; it can no longer be stopped.
The two thirds of Americans who either voted for Trump or couldn't be bothered to vote against him because they aReN't PoLiTiCaL are going to have to come to terms with their new place in the world one way or another. The US is no longer seen as a stable military partner[0], nor a stable economic partner as evidenced by TFA. It's easy to blame Trump but he is merely a symptom of the root cause, which is the attitudes shared by a huge number of Americans.
America will cease to be (and in some cases already has ceased to be) the world's epicenter of geopolitical soft power, scientific innovation, and financial clout. Treaties to which the US is a signatory are not worth the paper they're printed on. The foundations have already been laid, and the de-Americanization trend can't be stopped. For a people so accustomed to feeling like a privileged special class of world citizens, I honestly wonder if the American psyche can handle it. Probably we'll see a wave of people who "never supported Trump in the first place", just like tons of Germans were "never Nazis in the first place" once it became socially unpalatable.
So, congrats, I guess. At least you guys got some people with brown skin deported.
[0] https://www.readtheline.ca/p/matt-gurney-we-will-never-fucki...
I regret to inform you that your tax obligations don't disappear just because they're in a different currency. Worse, because you're a US national, they don't disappear even if you're physically in a different country.
What about RSD to Serbia? CHF to Switzerland?
This kind of thing is why I'm optimistic both about Bitcoin and fiat currencies in third world countries like Brazil and India.
Credit Card in Europe is very much associated with Debt.
I don't think that's the case.
And for example in Ukraine the situation is exactly the opposite: cards issued are typically Credit cards, but with all features of credit cards turned off which effectively makes them debit cards.
European Parliament committee backs digital euro - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48645468 - June 2026
Indian UPI gets mentioned a lot, but when Visa, Mastercard didn't agree with data sovereignty rules among other rules, India quickly developed RuPay [0]. Now most debit cards in India are RuPay. CCs stand at 18% share.
They also integrate seamlessly to UPI.
Why doesn’t the EU consider something like that? They want to jump direct to digital currencies? Is that it? Something else?
[0]: Data rules came in 2017/18, RuPay was developed in 2012 iirc. But it got unprecedented push after the rule.
and there should be a right to use all payment methods in the constitution or whatever the eu equivalent is. all stores must accept digital euro and physical stores also accept cash. crypto shouldnt be a part of the system but protected from being made illegal in any member state, privacy coins especially.
No thanks.
Ideal/Wero is good.
Use my credit cards for larger online payments. Mainly because it has insurance and makes it easy to dispute something.
Last year a large Swedish clothing brand didn’t deliver 400 euros worth of clothing. They said they did. I have nothing. Customer service unhelpful. I disputed it with the bank where I have the credit card. The same day it was fixed.
I am still not quite sure how this would affect my day-to-day (private) payment experience transaction cost etc.
But is has strategic value for Europe:
> [...] European dependencies in critical technologies. A digital euro could mitigate these developments in the medium term if the infrastructure is mainly operated by European companies and if European payment service providers manage to achieve a leading position in the evolving ecosystem for digital euro services.
Some more: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/timeline/profuse...
You will need to pass KYC at every counter.
So I don’t see the day-to-day difference with digital euro, except that the backend seems to have fewer intermediaries (and maybe lower cost for the merchant?). Also it would work in more than one country which is good.
Is the buzzword just flying over my head?
If your bank fail, you loose the money you held in the bank (except the insured amount). If you have some cash, that's independent from any private company, and it must be accepted everywhere. Digital Euro should have the advantages of cash and the comfort of electronic payments, too.
This sounds more like a cross-EU unified payment system/mechanism rather than a "digital currency" (which already exists).