It is a particular pleasure for me to speak in Berlin, which symbolises more than any other city the historic peaceful re-integration of Europe. I would therefore like to extend my warm gratitude to President Axel Weber and the Board of the Bundesbank for the invitation to Berlin this evening.
As on June 30th, in the retail pilot, we had crossed more than one million users and more than 262,000 merchants. The digital form of currency brings along the multiple possibilities which can bring innovation and efficiency such as features of offline, programmability, cross border transactions in current systems and may create altogether new frameworks for financial system to operate in.