6 ms·

Can Europe break free of Visa and Mastercard? MEPs stall digital euro

47 points by doener 8mo ago

joe_mamba 8mo ago
>"The project would create an electronic form of cash issued by the European Central Bank, designed to sit alongside banknotes and the payments services offered by commercial banks. Supporters argue it would give citizens direct access to digital “public” money — something that, for now, largely exists only in the form of cash." I don't get how does the creation of a new "digital Euro" supposed to replace Visa and Mastercard, when they're just payment processors transactioning the existing euros, not specialized digital ones. So shouldn't the EU build a Visa/Mastercard competitor instead of a new currency? What am I missing here? Also this breaks my brain: >"Brussels proposed a digital form of cash that could be used both online and offline. Navarrete, by contrast, is pushing for an offline-only model." How is digital cash supposed to work offline-only? By offline do they mean without a centralized authority(like crypto) or without internet connectivity?
- crote 8mo ago
  > So shouldn't the EU build a Visa/Mastercard competitor instead of a new currency. We had one. Europay International was the "E" in the "EMV" smart payment card standard, and they used to dominate the European payment card industry. They merged with MasterCard in 2002.
  - toyg 8mo ago
    It was a different time. I reckon the same acquisition, today, would not get approval from the much-beefed-up EU regulatory authority (i.e. the competition commissioner). It's too late to fix the past, but we can avoid making the same mistakes in the future, if we continue to work towards federal structures.
- graemep 8mo ago
  I remember reading about proposals and experiments with anonymous digital cash that predated blockchain (or at least bitcoin becoming big) and worked fully offline. I have do idea how they were supposed to work.
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    They probably didn't - that's why we have bitcoin instead. Nobody knew how to solve the double spend problem until bitcoin.
    - graemep 8mo ago
      Bitcoin does not solve it offline. Blockchain is distributed, but very much online.
bradley13 8mo ago
That's mixing apples and oranges. Digital currencies have nothing to do with credit cards. First, consider: The Euro is already digital, as are all the other European currencies. We can easily transfer money electronically, either via our bank, or via a variety of different apps. The "Digital Euro" (and similar proposals by other political entities) has only one purpose: Causing all of your transactions and financial data to pass through government hands. Complete surveillance. The government knows everything about your financial life, and can intervene whenever and however it wants: from stopping an individual transaction to completely freezing your assets. De-banking made easy.
- zoul 8mo ago
  Well, right now a foreign government can do that to us, so shifting the risk to our own politicians would be an improvement.
  - hulitu 8mo ago
    Famous last words. /s
  - thisislife2 8mo ago
    Yeah. Otherwise what's the point of being a sovereign country?
  - TacticalCoder 8mo ago
    > Well, right now a foreign government can do that to us ... Well no they can't because in addition to VISA and Mastercard we have non-centralized EUR tansfers (say from your bank account to your landlord's bank account) and we also have EUR bills and coins. This centralized digital EUR is scary: I've already had to deal with bank accounts being wrongfully frozen and when that happens you hit a wall of people who hide behind legalize: "we're not allowed to say why your account is frozen". In my mother-in-law's case she happened to share an identical family name to someone who had done mischief. If it was a digital EUR and all her assets had been frozen, it'd have been catastrophic (you cannot pay your bills anymore and hence everything gets very messy very quickly).
stefantalpalaru 8mo ago
[dead]
trimethylpurine 8mo ago
"with opposition mainly coming from some centrist and far-right MEPs" Word salad. Are we supposed to deduce that it's only pushed by leftists? Why does journalism today require reading between the lines? Just tell us what's happening.

47 points by doener 8mo ago

>"The project would create an electronic form of cash issued by the European Central Bank, designed to sit alongside banknotes and the payments services offered by commercial banks. Supporters argue it would give citizens direct access to digital “public” money — something that, for now, largely exists only in the form of cash." I don't get how does the creation of a new "digital Euro" supposed to replace Visa and Mastercard, when they're just payment processors transactioning the existing euros, not specialized digital ones. So shouldn't the EU build a Visa/Mastercard competitor instead of a new currency? What am I missing here? Also this breaks my brain: >"Brussels proposed a digital form of cash that could be used both online and offline. Navarrete, by contrast, is pushing for an offline-only model." How is digital cash supposed to work offline-only? By offline do they mean without a centralized authority(like crypto) or without internet connectivity?

crote 8mo ago
> So shouldn't the EU build a Visa/Mastercard competitor instead of a new currency. We had one. Europay International was the "E" in the "EMV" smart payment card standard, and they used to dominate the European payment card industry. They merged with MasterCard in 2002.
- toyg 8mo ago
  It was a different time. I reckon the same acquisition, today, would not get approval from the much-beefed-up EU regulatory authority (i.e. the competition commissioner). It's too late to fix the past, but we can avoid making the same mistakes in the future, if we continue to work towards federal structures.
graemep 8mo ago
I remember reading about proposals and experiments with anonymous digital cash that predated blockchain (or at least bitcoin becoming big) and worked fully offline. I have do idea how they were supposed to work.
- direwolf20 8mo ago
  They probably didn't - that's why we have bitcoin instead. Nobody knew how to solve the double spend problem until bitcoin.
  - graemep 8mo ago
    Bitcoin does not solve it offline. Blockchain is distributed, but very much online.

bradley13 8mo ago

That's mixing apples and oranges. Digital currencies have nothing to do with credit cards. First, consider: The Euro is already digital, as are all the other European currencies. We can easily transfer money electronically, either via our bank, or via a variety of different apps. The "Digital Euro" (and similar proposals by other political entities) has only one purpose: Causing all of your transactions and financial data to pass through government hands. Complete surveillance. The government knows everything about your financial life, and can intervene whenever and however it wants: from stopping an individual transaction to completely freezing your assets. De-banking made easy.

zoul 8mo ago
Well, right now a foreign government can do that to us, so shifting the risk to our own politicians would be an improvement.
- hulitu 8mo ago
  Famous last words. /s
- thisislife2 8mo ago
  Yeah. Otherwise what's the point of being a sovereign country?
- TacticalCoder 8mo ago
  > Well, right now a foreign government can do that to us ... Well no they can't because in addition to VISA and Mastercard we have non-centralized EUR tansfers (say from your bank account to your landlord's bank account) and we also have EUR bills and coins. This centralized digital EUR is scary: I've already had to deal with bank accounts being wrongfully frozen and when that happens you hit a wall of people who hide behind legalize: "we're not allowed to say why your account is frozen". In my mother-in-law's case she happened to share an identical family name to someone who had done mischief. If it was a digital EUR and all her assets had been frozen, it'd have been catastrophic (you cannot pay your bills anymore and hence everything gets very messy very quickly).

stefantalpalaru 8mo ago

[dead]

trimethylpurine 8mo ago

"with opposition mainly coming from some centrist and far-right MEPs" Word salad. Are we supposed to deduce that it's only pushed by leftists? Why does journalism today require reading between the lines? Just tell us what's happening.