OMFIF European Payments and Digital Assets Conference - CBDCs on the Agenda

At OMFIF’s European payments and digital assets conference CBDCs were on the agenda. Wholesale CBDCs are more familiar ground for central banks since they can be regarded as exploiting a technological opportunity rather than a major structural change.

Retail CBDCs are seen as needed in order to continue ‘to offer access to legal tender which goes along with the decline of cash’, according to Doris Dietze, head of digital finance at the German Federal Ministry of Finance, and Costanza Iacomini, head of fintech sector, Banca d’Italia.’ Payments have moved up the agenda as the political and strategic importance of payments has gone up agenda in Europe, primarily due to the awareness of the power of non-bank players in finance and big tech dominance in the Eurosystem.