This rise includes denominations that are predominantly used for transactions, rather than for savings. These findings confirm the appropriateness of the ECB’s neutral stance on payments, which allows for both cash and cashless payments. This approach is based on four principles: (1) technological safety, (2) efficiency, (3) technological neutrality, and (4) freedom of choice for users of the respective means of payments.
The ECB’s supreme objective is to ensure price stability. To support that objective, it supplies safe central-bank liquidity, in the form of both bank-held central-bank reserves and banknotes (the latter being the sole notes with the status of legal tender in eurozone). If Europe were to abolish cash, it would cut off people’s only direct link to central-bank money.