The project has been on the table since last year, and has not been called into question by the coronavirus crisis. The Banque de France will soon be testing a digital currency, which will be reserved for transactions carried out on the financial markets by institutional players. To this end, it has just launched a call for projects.
A Central Bank Digital Currency
This digital euro, or e-euro, is not intended to be made available to the general public. This Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will be reserved for interbank settlements, and is designed to reduce transaction times and costs. It will therefore be a "wholesale" MDBC, not a retail digital currency. However, the Central Bank does not rule out the possibility of one day issuing a digital currency for retail customers.
This decision also comes in reaction to the Libra initiative, Facebook's cryptocurrency project. A wholesale digital currency would enable the Central Bank to assert its sovereignty in the face of such private initiatives.
A Europe-wide call for projects
As the Banque de France explains in its call for projects, this is "the first phase of a more global program of experiments linked to the MDBC". The experiments carried out within this framework are not intended to be perpetuated or generalized by the Banque de France.
The aim of this call for projects is toanalyze various issues linked to this digital currency, such as its impact on financial stability or monetary policy, its contributions and effects on the current operation of payment and settlement infrastructures, and all this in relation to the different technologies being tested.
In the end, only 10 projects will be selected. The structures will not necessarily be French, as the call for projects is open to the whole of Europe. Each of these structures is free to carry out several experiments using the technologies of their choice, and to study one or more standard use cases for this "wholesale" digital currency.
Applications will be selected on July 10.