The digital euro, a reality hoped for "within five years", according to Ms Christine LAGARDE, President of the European Central Bank The digital euro, a reality hoped for "within five years", according to Ms Christine LAGARDE, President of the European Central Bank

The digital euro should become a reality within 5 years, said yesterday the President of the European Central Bank Christine LAGARDE, while an investigation by the institute places the confidentiality of this means of payment at the top of citizens' expectations.

"I think we will have a digital euro" and "in no more than five years I hope," LAGARDE said Wednesday at a virtual economic conference.

The most requested feature for a digital euro is the confidentiality of payments, reveals an ECB public survey whose first results were communicated yesterday by the institute. Payment privacy "ranks first among the required characteristics of a potential digital euro (41% of responses), followed by security (17%) and pan-European reach (10%)," a statement said.

A total of 8221 citizens, businesses and professional associations responded to the online questionnaire launched last October and which ended on Tuesday, a "record" among the public consultations launched to date by the ECB, it said.

"The high number of responses" shows the "great interest" of the public in "shaping the vision of a digital euro"," said Fabio PANETTA, member of the ECB's Executive Board and chair of the working group on the subject. The Governing Council of the ECB will decide in the spring whether or not to launch this pharaonic project.

The downward trend of cash in current payments has accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic, but this method of payment remains pampered by citizens, especially in Germany, because it guarantees the anonymous nature of purchases.

The digital euro will be "like banknotes, but in a digital form" to "make daily payments in a fast, simple and secure way", explains the ECB.

The institute also intends to respond to the launch of global private means of payment such as Libra, the cryptocurrency project launched by Facebook, and those adopted by other central banks such as the Chinese crypto-yuan with global ambitions.