The Association of Italian Commercial Banks, which has about 700 members, has been supporting the development of the digital euro since 2020. In a recently published document ABI said that distributed ledger technology (DLT) will allow more transparent and efficient allocation of responsibilities between the Central Bank and financial institutions, compared to the traditional banking system.
However, ABI participants fear that after the introduction of the digital euro, private users and companies will have direct access to the digital currency of the Central Bank, and in the long term, the need for the services of commercial banks may disappear. ABI has urged the European Central Bank (ECB) to retain banks’ role as intermediaries in the use of CBDCs. The digital euro should not compete with the existing instruments of financial institutions and prevent the provision of additional banking services, ABI said.
Previously, ABI called for the digital euro to be programmable, but the ECB did not support this idea, since in this case the scope of the programmable digital euro would be limited and it would no longer be fungible.
The Association also noted that commercial banks will play a significant role in the spread of the digital euro among the population of Europe. Given that banks will incur high costs associated with the anti-money laundering (AML) procedure and possible dispute resolution, banks should be compensated.
Recently, the Association of German Banks also asked the ECB to allow commercial financial institutions to take part in the development and launch of the digital euro, as they better understand the needs of customers.
Source: Bits
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