Yves Mersch on Central Bank Digital Currencies

Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank Yves Mersch joined Consensus: Distributed to outline a potential ECB central bank digital currency.Around 80% of central banks around the world are researching or developing a CBDC scheme, including the ECB, according to Mersch. “It’s not because we want to keep up with fashionable trends,” he said, “but because we have to be ready.”Mersch is directing the ECB to embrace financial innovations “that have the potential to transform payments and money faster and in much more disruptive ways than ever before.” His customers, the people of Europe, are signaling a willingness to change the way they conduct their financial lives.Mersch said a CBDC can preserve “the direct link” the ECB has with cash issuance and maintaining sovereignty over the Euro, as the economic bloc moves towards an increasingly cashless future.