Digital finance

On 8 March, Commissioner McGuinness gave a speech on the digital euro at the European Parliamentary Financial Services Forum, where she spoke about the changing nature of money, and our relationship with it. Ms McGuinness talked about the fact that, over the past decade, the use of banknotes and coins has declined and there has been a big shift towards digital payments. And she asked a key question: As digital payments explode, how do you keep central bank money accessible to everyone? Meanwhile, on 21 March, the Commissioner gave a keynote speech at an event in the European Parliament entitled ‘From Open Banking to Open Finance: what does the future hold?’ Here, Ms McGuinness talked about the Commission’s planned proposal on Open Finance. In particular, she addressed three main points: what Open Banking is, and why it hasn’t reached its full potential yet; how Open Finance will benefit consumer and businesses; and how the Open Finance ambitions will work with some of the EU’s other policy priorities.

Read the full digital euro speech here; read the full Open Finance speech here