The European Central Bank (ECB) recently provided an update on the digital euro project to the Eurogroup, an informal club composed of the Eurozone’s finance ministers. It honed into a concept recently gaining prominence among those closest to the central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative: digital financial inclusion.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has expanded the focus from the unbanked population to those with low digital or financial skills and is now considering new measures to facilitate vulnerable groups’ access to the digital euro. Still, the introduction of a CBDC could negatively impact cash usage and thus counter the efforts to enhance financial inclusion.
The Eurogroup’s update highlighted digital financial inclusion as a key principle of the CBDC project. “A digital euro will be designed to take on board people with no access to a bank account and with low digital or financial skills, as well as people with disabilities,” the presentation noted. It thus proposed some measures to make it easier for vulnerable groups to access the digital currency, including in-person support, physical digital euro payment cards, and (de)funding using cash at ATMs.
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