Under FAQ of the digital euro’s pageQ9. How private would the digital euro be?, that they want it to be equivalent to cash when it comes to privacy.
The digital euro is designed to be able to function offline in a way that would offer users a cash-like level of privacy, both for sending money to other people and for making payments in shops. When paying offline, only the payer and the payee would know the personal transaction details of the payments made. Anti-money laundering checks would be carried out by the distributing payment service provider (PSP) during the funding and defunding process, just as it is the case with cash withdrawals and deposits today.
In the case of online transactions, the Eurosystem would not identify users making or receiving payments, thereby protecting their personal data, but PSPs would be able to identify users for the purpose of compliance with anti-money laundering rules.
I… am not entirely clear on the technical aspects of it, or if what they said can actually accomplish what they claim. However, it is a factor they are considering, however much you actually trust them aside.
I would be interested in an explainer, for sure, on how they actually accomplish any of this (assuming they deliver).
Imagine Digital Euro Wallets as bank accounts managed by ECB. Similar to Open Banking, ECB will design an API and will provide access by licensing PSPs. ECB will only use and save wallet identifiers, it will not log identity of wallet owners. PSPs will have to verify the identity of wallet owners - at minimum they need to check that wallet owners are EU citizens at the time when the wallet is created. PSPs of transaction sender and receiver will need to communicate, because they need to obtain sender’s and receiver’s wallet ID in order to initiate and verify the payment. Based on this, various scenarios are possible. The PSPs may keep wallet owner’s personal information. They may also exchange and log the personal information as part of a transaction. ECB will possibly require logging of some information as part of money laundering precautions and PSP that don’t do that won’t get a licence and API access.
Apart from that, PSPs may wish to log information that goes beyond what they are legally required to. No doubt there will be initially lot of terrible consumer-unfriendly PSPs, mainly banks. Visa, MasterCard vor PayPal may also join as PSPs. But provided that ECB’s logging requirements aren’t too strict, privacy friendly PSPs will appear at some point.
Does anyone know if “online” here means for purchases made in e.g. a web browser, or also at a POS terminal that happens to be connected to the internet?
Under FAQ of the digital euro’s page
Q9. How private would the digital euro be?, that they want it to be equivalent to cash when it comes to privacy.I… am not entirely clear on the technical aspects of it, or if what they said can actually accomplish what they claim. However, it is a factor they are considering, however much you actually trust them aside.
I would be interested in an explainer, for sure, on how they actually accomplish any of this (assuming they deliver).
Sounds like what Taler is already trying to do. I would like that.
Imagine Digital Euro Wallets as bank accounts managed by ECB. Similar to Open Banking, ECB will design an API and will provide access by licensing PSPs. ECB will only use and save wallet identifiers, it will not log identity of wallet owners. PSPs will have to verify the identity of wallet owners - at minimum they need to check that wallet owners are EU citizens at the time when the wallet is created. PSPs of transaction sender and receiver will need to communicate, because they need to obtain sender’s and receiver’s wallet ID in order to initiate and verify the payment. Based on this, various scenarios are possible. The PSPs may keep wallet owner’s personal information. They may also exchange and log the personal information as part of a transaction. ECB will possibly require logging of some information as part of money laundering precautions and PSP that don’t do that won’t get a licence and API access.
Apart from that, PSPs may wish to log information that goes beyond what they are legally required to. No doubt there will be initially lot of terrible consumer-unfriendly PSPs, mainly banks. Visa, MasterCard vor PayPal may also join as PSPs. But provided that ECB’s logging requirements aren’t too strict, privacy friendly PSPs will appear at some point.
Does anyone know if “online” here means for purchases made in e.g. a web browser, or also at a POS terminal that happens to be connected to the internet?