• Digital Euro
• FAQs

Q3: Why would people want to use the digital euro?

The digital euro would be a payment solution for every occasion, for use anytime and anywhere in the euro area – just like cash, but ready for the digital age. It would be a universally accepted digital means of payment that consumers could use free of charge in shops, online or from person to person. It would give people the option to pay digitally, while still using a public means of payment. And it would be available both online and offline.

The digital euro would be designed to provide the highest level of security and privacy, in compliance with the rigorous standards of the European Union, which has the strongest security and privacy laws in the world.

The Eurosystem would not identify people based on their payments. Moreover, personal transaction details from offline digital euro payments would be known only to the payer and the payee.

The digital euro would be safe and, as a public good, guarantee access for all consumers, no matter where they live or their level of digital or financial skills. The digital euro would accommodate the needs of people with disabilities and those with no access to a bank account, ensuring that no one is left behind.

To ensure the digital euro would be usable and accessible throughout the euro area, the proposed digital euro Regulation presented by the European Commission foresees mandatory acceptance by any merchant who accepts digital payments, and mandatory distribution by banks to their customers.

In its current design, it is unclear what benefits the digital euro would bring to people in practice (KF5).

Contemporary cash and debit card payments already are generally free of charge for consumers— with merchants covering the fees—and debit cards can work online and offline [1], in the latter case posing a financial risk for merchants as the transaction may fail at a later time. Given that bank deposits are generally insured up to €100,000 there is no effective difference between debit cards and central bank money for the vast majority of Europeans, as long as we assume the deposit insurance can withstand a crisis. And for rich Europeans with savings larger than €100,000, the €3,000 cap on digital euro holdings [2] has a negligible effect of 3% in added securities, compared to simply opening another retail bank account.

The ECB answer claims that the digital euro will “provide the highest level of security and privacy”, but the current design proves this statement wrong: Fully anonymous transactions are only part of the offline version, which will likely not be able to hold up to this promise (KF2), as further detailed in Q7. On the other hand, the online version of the digital euro will offer even less consumer privacy compared to contemporary payment methods (KF1), as further discussed in Q9. It is very telling that the ECB, in a recent revision, slightly changed the wording from “The Eurosystem would not be able to identify people based on their payments.” by removing “be able to” [3].

The security of the offline version relies on secret proprietary technology (KF2), against well-established consensus among cryptographers (cf. Q7). This approach leaves the claim of a “safe” digital euro questionable and undermines the potential benefits of a “public” service, as users would remain dependent on proprietary digital payment technology, limiting transparency and fostering reliance on closed systems.

The current plans for the digital euro largely involve users opening a digital euro account and additionally linking it to a commercial bank account for the “waterfall” [4]. Thus, using the digital euro will require in practice both an existing commercial bank account and a second digital euro account, contradicting both easiness and inclusiveness.

We are also not aware of the ECB engaging with experts on innumerate users lacking key financial skills.

The ECB’s tender only requires the reference consumer software to be developed for iOS and Android smartphones [5], which are in its vast majority designed and produced outside Europe. Given that the digital euro will be based on proprietary technology, it would only be possible to use the digital euro on European mobile phone alternatives such as /e/OS and Murena phones or Ubuntu Touch from the German UBports Foundation, if the ECB actively provided support for it. At the same time, the digital euro as a proprietary system will prevent its users from studying the implementation and challenge its security. Instead, people will have to trust the provider and the auditors of the ECB without possibility to verify their claims. Truely embracing open standards and free software [6] instead of relying on proprietary technology would help to establish trust in the system (KF6) and allow for easier integration with alternative end-user devices.

1. J. Kagan, Offline debit card: What they are and how they work. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/offlinedebitcard.asp, 2020.
2. European Central Bank, Financial stability review. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/financial-stability-publications/fsr/html/ecb.fsr202311~bfe9d7c565.en.html, 2023.
3. European Central Bank, FAQs on a digital euro. https://web.archive.org/web/20250721000819/https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/faqs/html/ecb.faq_digital_euro.en.html, 2025.
4. European Central Bank, Progress on the investigation phase of a digital euro – fourth report. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/progress/shared/pdf/ecb.degov230713-fourth-progress-report-digital-euro-investigation-phase.en.pdf, 2023.
5. European Central Bank, Tender ID: PRO-009488. not public, available upon request, 2024.
6. Free Software Foundation, What is free software?. https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html, 1996.