Italy steps into the group of the European Union member countries supporting digital euro.
The Executive Committee of the Italian Banking Association (ABI) approved the general guidelines for the position on CBDC last week. This means the country is officially ready to join the creating and experimenting project of digital euro.
Digital euro, which is the central bank digital currency backed by the European Central Bank, got support from Italy, when Italian Banking Association of over 700 members, published a list of criteria for the CBDC and also expressed their will to participate in a project in order to speed up the implementation of European Union’s single digital currency:
Italian banks are available to participate in projects and experiments of a digital currency of the European Central Bank, contributing, thanks to the skills acquired in the construction of infrastructures and distributed governance, to speed up the implementation of a European-level initiative in a first nation.
The association, which has settled a group of experts last year to research “digital coins and crypto-assets”, finds monetary stability and compliance with the European regulatory framework as a top priority in order to gain citizens’ trust.
According to the announcement, Italian banks are already operating on distributed ledger technology with the Spunta Project, which aims to automate the reconciliation of interbank accounts.
Moreover, the ABI group states that the CBDC could be the best instrument to “reconcile the need for innovation” together with the currently existing rules.
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Moreover, the ABI group states that the availability of Central Bank Digital Coins could enable other innovative solutions like P2P or machine-to-machine transactions and allow cross-border P2P transactions with lower “interest rate, exchange rate, and counterparty risk”.
With the latest announcement, Italy becomes the fourth European Union member country that expressed its will in participating in the digital euro experimental program.
A few months ago the Bank of France launched its experimental program, which aims to test the integration of a CBDC for interbank settlements. Shortly thereafter the Netherlands Central Bank announced that it is ready to play a leading role in research and development of European digital currency. The Association of German Banks also showed its support for digital euro last year.
