I wonder what EU will come up with in the future, some kind of digital cash? Private transactions that must work instantly with all banks doing business in the EU?
Several countries here have their own solution, but none of them are compatible with each other. (Please correct me)
Since a few years ago, the ECB is already looking into the possibilities for implementing a digital euro as another way of paying across the entire Eurozone. The phrase "digital euro" has been kind of a political boogeyman because of the privacy concerns (fair) and implications that the physical euro might disappear (less fair, the right to be able to use it as legal tender is enshrined in the EU treaties and that can't be changed without everyone agreeing to it), but the base idea is to create a public infrastructure that would do what payment processors and credit card companies are doing for a hefty fee right now. Which, to me, sounds like a great answer to this problem.
There is also the European Payment Initiative (EPI). It's an organization set up by a group of banks to streamline payments around (AFAIK) SEPA instant credit transfers.
While I'm highly skeptical of shared initiatives by European banks, I'm far more skeptical of CBDCs, and the current EPI plans seem to be slightly less bad than current payment processes, power and privacy wise.
They're just as slow as you'd imagine though. It'll probably be usable by 2050 or something..
