As part of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) investigations, the European Central Bank (ECB) is planning to conduct digital euro ‘market research’ in January 2023. Market research often focuses on customers, but here the target is to gather information from CBDC suppliers.
It will target CBDC market participants to explore all the technical design options available over a six week period. It is looking for technical input as well as cost and duration estimates.
While responses will be treated as confidential, it plans to publish the findings in the second quarter of 2023. Participants will not be compensated.
The central bank was keen to highlight that this has no impact on eligibility for digital euro procurement and should not be treated as pre-selection for subsequent tenders. No decision has yet been made about proceeding with a digital euro, although a positive result is widely expected when the time comes in October 2023.
In November, the central bank invited payment industry experts to submit use case ideas for programmable money. And in its desire to be transparent about its processes, earlier this month, the ECB published its current design features used for retail digital euro prototypes.
Separately the Banque de France is planning to run wholesale digital euro pilots next year, which will provide a CBDC for the DLT Pilot regime for tokenized securities.
