Marketer of the Month Podcast with Evelien Witlox

Hey there! Welcome to the Marketer Of The Month blog!

We recently interviewed Evelien Witlox for our monthly podcast – ‘Marketer of the Month’! We had some amazing insightful conversations with Evelien and here’s what we discussed about –

1. Evolution of cash to digital form and its importance in a digitizing world.

2. Reducing dependence on non-European payment providers and maintaining currency independence.

3. Interaction with stakeholders and the public to shape the digital euro.

4. Significance of societal agreement and legislation for the digital euro.

5. Long-term goals include successful legislation, implementation, and offering an alternative choice.

6. Ensuring user-friendliness and security in the digital euro’s design.

About our host:

Dr. Saksham Sharda is the Chief Information Officer at Outgrow.co. He specializes in data collection, analysis, filtering, and transfer by means of widgets and applets. Interactive, cultural, and trending widgets designed by him have been featured on TrendHunter, Alibaba, ProductHunt, New York Marketing Association, FactoryBerlin, Digimarcon Silicon Valley, and at The European Affiliate Summit.

About our guest:

Evelien Witlox is the Director of Digital Euro at the European Central Bank, known for her energetic leadership and expertise in managing large, international teams and partnerships. She champions future-oriented strategies with a results-driven approach, pushing teams and organizations to excel beyond current limits. 

Designing a New Currency: European Central Bank’s Director of Digital Euro Evelien Witlox on Digitizing Cash

The Intro!

Saksham Sharda: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. I’m your host, Dr. Saksham Sharda, and I’m the creative director at Outgrow. co. And for this month we are going to interview Evelien Witlox who is the Director of Digital Euro at the European Central Bank.

Evelien Witlox: Great to be here. Thank you.

Don’t have time to read? No problem, just watch the Podcast!

Challenge yourself with this trivia about the exciting topics Evelien Witlox covered in the podcast.

Launch Interactive Quiz

Or you can just listen to it on Spotify!

The Rapid Fire Round!

Saksham Sharda: All right, so let’s start with the rapid-fire round. The first question is, at what age do you want to retire?

Evelien Witlox: Well, maybe 80.

Saksham Sharda: How long does it take you to get ready in the mornings?

Evelien Witlox: I’m quite quick. Half an hour.

Saksham Sharda: Favorite color?

Evelien Witlox: Blue.

Saksham Sharda: What time of day are you most inspired?

Evelien Witlox: In the morning.

Saksham Sharda: How many hours of sleep can you survive on?

Evelien Witlox: Seven.

Saksham Sharda: Fill in the blank. An upcoming finance trend is ______.

Evelien Witlox: CBDC.

Saksham Sharda: The city in which the best kiss of your life happened.

Evelien Witlox: Amsterdam.

Saksham Sharda: Pick one. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg.

Evelien Witlox: Zuckerberg.

Saksham Sharda: The biggest mistake of your career?

Evelien Witlox: To stay too long as an employer.

Saksham Sharda: How do you relax?

Evelien Witlox: Reading a book.

Saksham Sharda: How many cups of coffee do you drink per day?

Evelien Witlox: Zero.

Saksham Sharda: A habit of yours that you Hate?

Evelien Witlox: I always need to clean up before I start working.

Saksham Sharda: The most valuable skill you’ve learned in life?

Evelien Witlox: Listening.

Saksham Sharda: Your favorite Netflix show.

Evelien Witlox: Emily in Paris.

Saksham Sharda: One-word description of your leadership style.

Evelien Witlox: Adjusting.

Saksham Sharda: Coffee or tea to kickstart your day.

Evelien Witlox: Tea.

Saksham Sharda: Top priority in your daily schedule.

Evelien Witlox: To meet the team.

Saksham Sharda: Ideal vacation spot for relaxation.

Evelien Witlox: I prefer to be at the beach.

Saksham Sharda: Key factor for maintaining a work-life balance.

Evelien Witlox: Closing down your laptop at some point in time.

The Big Questions!

Saksham Sharda: Alright, That’s the end of the rapid fire. Let’s go on to the longer questions, which you can answer with as much time and ease as you like. The first one is, what are the primary objectives of the digital Euro project and what role do you see it playing in the future of European Payments?

Evelien Witlox: Well, thank you. That’s a very wide question. So to start with, the easy answer is, that for us, it’s a natural evolution of cash. So currently people have two ways to pay. Either they pay with central bank money, which is cash, or you pay with digital means of payment that you are provided by your bank or non-bank providers. And we believe that when everything is digitizing, it’s also logical that cash is digitizing so we move to digital cash. Apart from that, I think there are key reasons for the digital euro that we consider. One is this one. So we find it important that we have both cash and a private means of payment, that you can switch between both, and that you can keep this trust. So that’s one. Second, we find it very important that also digitally, like with the banknote, you can have one way to pay, which is not, not there in Europe. And finally, it’s also about strategic autonomy. So currently we are very dependent on non-European providers for something so essential for society as payments. Nobody thinks about it, but if it stops, it’s like having no water, no gas. It’s disrupted very soon. And, next to that we also see, new forms of, alternative currencies, popping up stablecoins, but also other CBDCs. So we find it important that we also maintain our own currency and our strategic independence.

Saksham Sharda: So all this sounds very good in theory, but are there any key challenges and opportunities you’re facing in implementing the digital euro?

Evelien Witlox: Well, first of all, it’s of course that the digital euro would be something for everybody, for society. So it’s important that we have a joint understanding and agreement on how a digital euro should be framed. And this is something that is currently done in the legislation. There’s a draft legislation by the commission which is now entered into a democratic debate. So that’s the first thing that is important that we do. And then the second one is, is that next to the objectives that I just said, they are more policy objectives, but we need to make sure that people would like to pay with the digital Euro or like to be paid with the digital Euro. And as we said, a lot of time we are not replacing cash, we’re not replacing private means of payment. We’re an alternative choice, but we would value it if people would use it in certain use cases regularly.

Saksham Sharda: So how do you further plan to engage with various stakeholders including financial institutions, businesses, and consumers, for the development of the digital euro?

Evelien Witlox: This is very important for us. So from the start, we have interacted with all market stakeholders. So we have a formal interaction via the European Retail Payment Board, where you have merchants, you have consumer organizations and financial institutions, both banks and non-bank, PSPs and there we have already interacted a lot on the design and the things that are important and we continue to do this going forward. Next to that, we reach out regularly to civil society and organizations, and we go to all kinds of events. We do post-calls in interviews to make sure that we reach as much as possible, as well as the general public.

Saksham Sharda: How do you then ensure that financial institutions are adequately prepared and equipped to handle the integration of the digital euro into their existing systems?

Evelien Witlox: So in the end, they need to do it themselves. So, but, we could make sure that it would not disrupt it. So we set up a rule book development group last year where we have the representatives of these market stakeholders, including financial institutions, and they help us to translate what. So what do we want in the how and into what specifications there? We actively look into how we can reuse existing standards and existing solutions so that we can limit the implementation effort that is needed from all parties. And we do this in parallel with the legislation so that at the moment the legislation could be adopted and then potentially the governing council would decide to issue. Then we can give full clarity not only to financial institutions but also to the merchants who would need to accept the digital euro, and how they could best implement that.

Saksham Sharda: So it seems you have had a very broad experience in the payments industry in general. Can you share more about your career journey in this industry and how it led you to your current role at the ECB?

Evelien Witlox: Yes. Well, I’m from nature or from a background, a technical engineer, but technical engineering was industrial engineering and business. So with an economic angle to it. And then after two years in something completely different, I was in the textile industry. I moved to a bank as a management trainee. And then they had five and they dropped them somewhere and I was dropped in payments, and then I was caught and fell in love with payments. So I never left payments. I did move employers. So I had multiple employers in the private sector seeing both the processor side, the bank side, the merchant side, and the consumer side. And then there was the opportunity for the program manager of the digital euro. And I thought this was a great step because I truly believe that payments are, as I explained before, really a public good. So it’s good that we ensure it’s there for the future. So it was a nice bridge and a nice step to make to do this, product development, I would say, on the European scale.

Saksham Sharda: So how is the digital Euro project that you’re working on now, how does it address privacy concerns while ensuring compliance with regulations such as GDPR?

Evelien Witlox: Yeah, well GDPR for us is a given. But on top of that, we saw from a public consultation before we even started the investigation phase that privacy is very high on people’s concerns or wishes actually for the digital euro. So we have designed the digital euro from the start with privacy on top of our minds. First of all, we are also designing an offline digital euro, which would mean that you would hold a digital euro on a secure element either on your phone or on a card. And it’s like putting money in your wallet, really fiscal money in your wallet. So if you lose it, it’s gone. But the benefit of that is, if you do a transaction, the transaction goes between the two secure elements, so nobody it not enters a network so nobody can trace this kind of payment. So it’s a very private solution and very close to cash next to that. For the online one where the information travels over the internet and via network, we have made sure in the design that the Euro system will not see any private data. So it goes first to the bank. The bank anonymizes it, so make it anonymous for us so that we cannot link any transaction to a private individual. So with that, we really truly believe that we deliver a payment solution, with a much higher level of privacy than any current solution currently around.

Saksham Sharda: So speaking of a higher level of privacy compared to other solutions, does the ECB also keep an eye on other ongoing central bank digital currency projects in the world?

Evelien Witlox: Yes, of course. So it’s in a certain sense, uncharted territory, so it’s good to learn from each other. We see that jurisdictions have different approaches, sometimes more on the policy side, and sometimes more on the technology side. So we don’t copy one-on-one, but we do learn and we share experiences and also with the BIS, so the bank of IT national settlements, we also already work that we can make sure that towards the future if there are multiple digital central banks digital currencies, that they can be interoperable with each other.

Saksham Sharda: So what are some interesting lessons that the ECB has learned from these other central banks’ CBDC initiatives? Any interesting memorable lessons?

Evelien Witlox: Well, I think it’s important to learn from more technical experiments that are done, for example by the next bank offline for example. But we also learn from experience with implementation, the rollout, use cases, and what works, and what doesn’t work, so that we can design the best digital euro for the Europeans.

Saksham Sharda: And so how do you plan to differentiate the digital euro from other payment options and ensure it resonates with people?

Evelien Witlox: So there are a couple of features that are very, very distinctive. So for example, the offline digital euro is a solution that is currently non-existent in the European market, in which we give a digital well as close to cash as possible. How do you say it is equivalent to cash? But for example, the other very important thing is that the digital euro would be accepted all across Europe so you can trust. So it is widely accessible, so you can trust if you go to your bank that you can access. But also if you look at the current draft legislation, all merchants will have to accept it, the ones that accept digital payments. So that means that you can, like with your banknote, really trust that wherever you travel, either physically or online, in Europe, you can pay with a digital euro or you can share a bill with friends even if you’re not from the same country. These are already very important benefits. On top of that, we will take extreme care that it’s very secure and user-friendly in its usage.

Saksham Sharda: Okay, a little bit of a lighter question now. What does your typical day at the ECB look like? You wake up in the morning and then?

Evelien Witlox: Well, I live roughly 20 minutes from the ECB. So, I walk to the ECB, I’m having a late breakfast, so normally when I come to the floor, I start my computer. But because we’re so secure, it takes a while before we upgrade to all the systems. So in parallel, I take a cup of tea, I take my breakfast check in with the team and then I have all kinds of physical meetings, so really one-on-one seeing people, but also a lot of virtual people meetings. And they very, very much show there are either with the team itself or we interact with potential suppliers or quite often there are meetings with our stakeholders where we interact with them and we learn from them. So it’s a wide priority and we talk about legal stuff. So what would the legislation look like and what would it mean for us to be very technical, topics would we do message-based or API-based? So I have never had a dull moment. There’s a nice lunch area in the ECB. Normally, I’m Dutch, so we are used to liking some bread, but you get a warm meal, which I like. Actually, I’ve gotten too used to that. And then I try not to close too late. And then I woke back home and I tried to relax a bit before the next day.

Saksham Sharda: How much of your time is taken up by meetings?

Evelien Witlox: Quite a few. I think maybe 80%.

Saksham Sharda: What advice would you have for people looking for a job in this industry or with ECB?

Evelien Witlox: Well, I think all the time if you need to look for a job that interests you, so that intrinsically motivates you. So you need to be, I think, curious by nature because payments is a very interesting topic. It’s not so easy. It’s a two-sided market, so it’s both, and it depends a lot on it. So that combination of complexity you need to, to like and to do. And then otherwise, then I would just go for it and give it a try.

Saksham Sharda: So looking ahead at the future, what are your long-term goals for the digital Euro and your vision for the future of payments in Europe?

Evelien Witlox: Well, being the program manager of the digital Euro we would hope that the legislation would pass, of course, and that then the governing council would decide to issue the digital Euro. So I would love to bring the digital euro really to life and to really implement it and to be able to do one of the first transactions. Of course, the first one will be done by the president and to really see it coming into existence that would be something personal. But I think it’s also important, as I said before, that we have this as an alternative choice for the future to ensure that people have access to central bank money.

Saksham Sharda: How do you balance this future-oriented thinking with a results-driven approach in your leadership style?

Evelien Witlox: Well, I think there is currently we’re a bit of aSo we, since we are depending on the legislation we, we don’t have very clear timelines, but we keep trying to set goals of things that we find important and that we know we need to do anyway and to keep the pace there. So we just set goals for the coming two years and then of course we set goals for the coming three months. And I have to say I have a very highly motivated team. So they are already very motivated and result-driven by themselves. So it’s not that I need to push them a lot, but with that, we keep, we, we keep the pace and we also believe it’s important to keep the pace because the evolutions in payments are, and that trigger the thinking on the digital euro are still progressing. We need to be aware that implementing new payment solutions is always taking more than you hope for. So it takes some time. So we need to keep pace to make sure that we are there when in time to address the challenges that we want to address and need to address.

Saksham Sharda: Alright, So the last question for you is for personal kind. What would you be doing in your life, if not this?

Evelien Witlox: I would write a book.

Let’s Conclude!

Saksham Sharda: Thanks, everyone for joining us for this month’s episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. That was Evelien Witlox who is the Director of Digital Euro at the European Central Bank.

Evelien Witlox: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Saksham Sharda: Check out the website for more details and we’ll see you once again next month with another marketer of the month.