ECB’s Panetta Says CBDCs ‘Likely’ to Be Legal Tender: Report
However, this status “should not be taken for granted.”
Nov 9, 2021 at 12:01 p.m. UTCUpdated May 11, 2023 at 5:20 p.m. UTC
:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/HO7TQWDQ7FCD5DNVGX2QE655WI.jpg)
/arc-photo-coindesk/arc2-prod/public/LXF2COBSKBCNHNRE3WTK2BZ7GE.png)
Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) will probably become legal tender in the jurisdictions of their issuance, the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Fabio Panetta said.
- Panetta, a member of the ECB’s executive board, said this was “likely” during a panel in Helsinki on Tuesday, according to a Bloomberg report. However, this status “should not be taken for granted,” he added.
- CBDCs being legal tender would give them an edge over other payment options provided by private companies and help achieve wider use by the public.
- “It would be quite awkward not to have legal-tender status for an additional instrument issued by a central bank,” Panetta said.
- A document published today outlining the ECB’s policy considerations for introducing a digital euro lists the possibility of legal tender status as one of its principal areas for investigation.
- Other considerations include interaction with the European retail payments market, design choices, use cases and what front and back-end technical infrastructure could best handle these issues.
- The ECB has been discussing a CBDC since the start of the year and said in July it was commencing an investigative phase that would last 24 months.
:format(webp)/s3.amazonaws.com/arc-authors/coindesk/008ae87f-5c6e-412b-816b-ded600ac5054.png)
Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.