The deployment of tokenised settlement assets across borders would also pose a risk to our monetary sovereignty, if it resulted in the use of stablecoins backed by foreign currencies or CBDCs. B- To reconcile competition and sovereignty, a “retail” central bank digital currency is obviously a potentially important lever. 1- This was the main aim of the investigation phase launched by the Eurosystem in July last year. Issuing a retail CBDC, nevertheless, raises a number of operational challenges. In particular because financial intermediaries, including banks, play a key role in the security and financial stability of our monetary and financial system. Introducing a CBDC must therefore neither result in the conversion of a significant proportion of bank deposits into assets held in CBDCs – in normal times as well as in times of stress – nor compete with banks in their day-to-day relations with their customers. These issues need to be addressed by design in the architecture and functionality of a digital euro, for example by introducing holding limits or by promoting an intermediated model. This is why it is essential that the financial intermediaries, along with the other stakeholders, be properly involved in the investigation phase that we are conducting: an expert advisory group has already been set up at European level,1 and this consultation will be extended to all stakeholders in the coming months, in particular via the European and French market bodies at our disposal. 2- But other levers will be needed to reconcile competition and sovereignty. First and foremost, the regulatory lever.
Denis Beau: From open banking to open finance Speech by Mr Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, at the France Payments Forum “The Europe of banking and financial services” – Paris Europlace – France Innovation, Paris, 24 March 2022. * * * Technological innovations, changes in demand, the arrival of new players: the changes underway in the financial sector are providing a strong impetus to relax the conditions of access to the market, in order to foster competition and thus encourage the development of new, more efficient and less costly services. In Europe, in the field of payments, this relaxation has already occurred. The EMD, the PSD1 and finally the PSD2 directives have all resulted in the emergence of more agile players, particularly in terms of data exploitation. The pressure to open up data now extends to insurance and savings: after open banking, we now speak of open finance. This pressure calls for further adapting the regulatory framework. But what should our guiding principles be? In the payments sector, the main objective of the directives I mentioned was to reconcile openness and security. While this challenge remains relevant for the transition from open banking to open finance, with digitalisation and the development of the platform economy, we have seen two other challenges emerge: reconciling innovation and integration on the one hand and competition and sovereignty on the other.