{"id":62971,"date":"2025-07-09T03:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T07:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/?p=62971"},"modified":"2025-07-09T03:48:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T07:48:19","slug":"marketer-of-the-month-podcast-episode-230-cash-me-if-you-can-european-central-bank-digital-euro-hod-erik-tak-explains-border-free-wallets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/podcast-eric-tak","title":{"rendered":"Marketer of The Month Podcast- EPISODE 230: Cash Me If You Can: European Central Bank&#8217;s Digital Euro HoD Erik Tak Explains Border-Free Walletsh"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"new-blog-post-content\">\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"EPISODE_230_Marketer_of_the_Month_Podcast_with_Eric_Tak\"><\/span><strong>EPISODE 230: Marketer of the Month Podcast with<\/strong> <strong>Eric Tak<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1><div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_62 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-69d3d111007fa\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-69d3d111007fa\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/podcast-eric-tak\/#EPISODE_230_Marketer_of_the_Month_Podcast_with_Eric_Tak\" title=\"EPISODE 230: Marketer of the Month Podcast with Eric Tak\">EPISODE 230: Marketer of the Month Podcast with Eric Tak<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-2' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/podcast-eric-tak\/#Cash_Me_If_You_Can_European_Central_Banks_Digital_Euro_HoD_Erik_Tak_Explains_Border-Free_Wallets\" title=\"Cash Me If You Can: European Central Bank&#8217;s Digital Euro HoD Erik Tak Explains Border-Free Wallets\">Cash Me If You Can: European Central Bank&#8217;s Digital Euro HoD Erik Tak Explains Border-Free Wallets<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/podcast-eric-tak\/#The_Intro\" title=\"The Intro!\">The Intro!<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/podcast-eric-tak\/#Dont_have_time_to_read_No_problem_just_watch_the_Podcast\" title=\"Don\u2019t have time to read? No problem, just watch the Podcast!\">Don\u2019t have time to read? No problem, just watch the Podcast!<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/podcast-eric-tak\/#Or_you_can_just_listen_to_it_on_Spotify\" title=\"Or you can just listen to it on Spotify!\">Or you can just listen to it on Spotify!<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6\" href=\"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/podcast-eric-tak\/#The_Rapid_Fire_Round\" title=\"The Rapid Fire Round!\">The Rapid Fire Round!<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n\n<p>Hey there! Welcome to the <strong><em>Marketer Of The Month<\/em><\/strong> blog!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We recently interviewed Eric Tak for our monthly podcast &#8211; \u2018<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/cz\/podcast\/marketer-of-the-month\/id1481977557\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marketer of the Month<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019! We had some amazing insightful conversations with Eric and here\u2019s what we discussed about-<\/span><\/p>\n<p>1. <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Preserving cash benefits while enabling remote digital transactions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>2. <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Offline payment functionality using token-based NFC technology solutions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>3. <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Consumer adoption incentives beyond the current payment method satisfaction.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>4. <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Non-programmable money approach despite social media speculation buzz.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>5. <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stablecoin differences, central bank backing versus private money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>6. <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Innovation competition strategy, the private sector is building on the ECB platform.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>7. <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">European payment sovereignty and universal accessibility mission goals.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>About our host:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><b>Dr. Saksham Sharda<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is the Chief Information Officer at <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/\"><b>Outgrow.co<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 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,\u00a0 ProductHunt, New York Marketing Association, FactoryBerlin, Digimarcon Silicon Valley, and at The European Affiliate Summit. <\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>About our guest:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><b>Eric Tak<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> has headed the ECB\u2019s Product Proposition Division of the Directorate Digital Euro since June 2024. He is responsible for managing the design and refinement of the digital euro product proposition, including the distribution model via payment service providers, liaising closely with internal and external stakeholders.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Cash_Me_If_You_Can_European_Central_Banks_Digital_Euro_HoD_Erik_Tak_Explains_Border-Free_Wallets\"><\/span><b>Cash Me If You Can: European Central Bank&#8217;s Digital Euro HoD Erik Tak Explains Border-Free Wallets<\/b><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_Intro\"><\/span><strong>The Intro!<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Outgrow&#8217;s Marketer of the Month. I&#8217;m your host, Dr. Saksham Sharda, and I\u2019m the creative director at Outgrow. co. And for this month we are going to interview Eric Tak, who is the Head of Division, Digital Euro &#8211; Product Proposition at European Central Bank.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Great to be here. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Dont_have_time_to_read_No_problem_just_watch_the_Podcast\"><\/span><strong>Don\u2019t have time to read? No problem, just watch the Podcast!<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Cash Me If You Can: European Central Bank's Digital Euro HoD Erik Tak Explains Border-Free Wallets\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5QyZq0-8FsM\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Challenge yourself with this trivia about the exciting topics Eric Tak covered in the podcast.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/premade.outgrow.us\/eric-tak-quiz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Launch Interactive Quiz<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"new-blog-post-content\">\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Or_you_can_just_listen_to_it_on_Spotify\"><\/span><strong>Or you can just listen to it on Spotify!<\/strong><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border-radius: 12px;\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/2Fy6tAN1ku9qrHFbbllVwg\/video?utm_source=generator\" width=\"624\" height=\"351\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_Rapid_Fire_Round\"><\/span><b>The Rapid Fire Round!<\/b><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-38738 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/rapid-fire.gif\" alt=\"rapid fire\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alright, so let&#8217;s start with the rapid fire rounds to break the ice. The first question is, at what age do you want to retire?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At 70.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How long does it take you to get ready in the mornings?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">25 minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most embarrassing moment of your life?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yet to happen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Favorite color?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What time of day are you most inspired?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">End of the morning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How many hours of sleep can you survive on?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Six.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The city in which the best kiss of your life happened?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Amsterdam.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pick one. Mark Zuckerberg or Sam Altman?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sam Altman.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How do you relax?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Too little.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How many cups of coffee do you drink per day?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two big ones.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A habit of yours that you dislike?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Strolling too much on my phone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most valuable skill you&#8217;ve learned in life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Letting go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Are you an early riser or a night owl?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Night owl.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One-word description of your leadership style?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Empowering<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Coffee or tea to kickstart your day?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Top priority in your daily schedule?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak:<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Making time to think.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ideal vacation spot for relaxation?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Somewhere where I can do a lot of stuff. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Preferably skiing in the Alps.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"new-blog-post-content\">\n<p><strong style=\"color: var(--global-palette3); font-family: inherit; font-size: 28px;\">The Big Questions!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-42105 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/outgrow.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/the-big-question.gif\" alt=\"Big Questions Richard James Burgess\" width=\"480\" height=\"320\" \/><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alright, so that was the end of the rapid fire. Now we&#8217;re gonna go on to the longer questions, and you can answer as much time and ease as you&#8217;d like. The first one is, why would Europeans need the digital euro?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">we&#8217;ve always had central bank money. All the stuff with debit cards, credit cards, and all the payment forms is from much later. When we talk to consumers and when we survey them, they like a lot of things about cash today, the central bank money, which is the fact that it&#8217;s available to everyone and accepted everywhere, the fact that it has high privacy or even anonymity, the fact that it&#8217;s a fallback in case of card outages, but it has one drawback. It didn&#8217;t really develop with time. I can only give money to you if we&#8217;re right in front of each other or next to each other. I can&#8217;t buy anything online with cash. Hence, we want to preserve all those good things that cash has, but bring it into the digital age, making it available to remote peer-to-peer, e-commerce transactions, as well as buying things in physical stores.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And how exactly would the digital Euro look?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak:<\/i><\/b> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A digital Euro would be a separate balance and a service that is distributed to you through your bank or through another financial institution where you could put money on, like maybe in a PayPal account, and that you can use to pay with the digital Euro, and you can fund it either directly in the transaction, you can fund it upfront, or you can have a regular funding onto the account. It could be an app on your phone. It could be in the mobile banking app of your current bank, or it could even be, for those who are less digitally savvy, a physical card.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And how would offline payments function if someone doesn&#8217;t have internet connectivity?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, so even today, we can pay without internet connectivity from the consumer, but the merchant needs to be online for authorisation. The offline digital Euro, which, for the more technically orientated people, is a token-based solution, basically allows us to exchange tokens from one smartphone or terminal to another through NFC without the interference necessary from any online checking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why would people want to use this digital Euro?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That&#8217;s always the most important question. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we do research, we did the space research at the ECB, and we see that a lot of people currently say they have limited problems when paying. However, we do see there are pockets where there are currently issues. People who don&#8217;t have a modern smartphone, or don&#8217;t want to use a smartphone, or are not able to use a smartphone very often, struggle to pay digitally. We want to solve that. There are people who have concerns, and that&#8217;s the biggest concern people have about payment.\u00a0 More than 50% have concerns about their privacy when paying digitally. And we want to offer the opportunity to not only have the really high privacy, the highest possible privacy in the online digital Euro, but even cash-like anonymity in the offline digital Euro. And we&#8217;ve been getting a lot of requests from the consumer representatives for people who have payments that would reveal a lot about their gender, their sexual preferences, their religious affiliations or political affiliations, to be able to do those payments in such a way that they can never be stored, retrieved or seen by anyone else.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What incentives might encourage early adoption among consumers who are already satisfied with current payment methods?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, first of all, it&#8217;s something that the merchants need to see the advantage of. Obviously, all merchants that accept the digital Euro, which if the digital Euro regulation is adopted, will be a mandatory thing to accept it, can suddenly accept consumers from the whole of Europe that would be able to pay, and not like in some cases still today that you only accept a domestic brand. Also, consumers could safely travel everywhere without having to worry about physical cash because they know the digital Euro will be accepted everywhere in Europe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, will the digital euro be replacing cash?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We&#8217;ll keep cash alive for as long as there&#8217;s a demand for it. But due to the limitations of cash, we have seen a decline over the past few years, with an acceleration of the decline during COVID. While we will make sure that cash will remain available, we will, as a complementary solution, also have this digital form of cash.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And is there any timeline for this transition? And would there be a phase-out period for physical cash?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak:<\/i><\/b> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, there won&#8217;t be a phase-out period for physical cash. It will remain as long as there&#8217;s any demand for it. Phasing in the digital Euro requires, as I mentioned before, first of all, a regulation for that that grants it legal tender status in Brussels between the co-legislators. Once that has happened, we can launch roughly about two and a half years later because all of the banks and the distributors, and the merchants need to build services to be able to accept and distribute it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Who would have access to people&#8217;s payment data?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, certainly not the European Central Bank or the Euro system. We would only know about account numbers and transactions associated with account numbers, but we would have no idea who that account belongs to. The only party that knows who that account belongs to is the distributor, typically a bank or a payment institution that is regulated. In that sense, similar to how it works today with, for instance, domestic card schemes. So we wouldn&#8217;t know anything.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And how would cross-border transactions be handled in terms of data sharing between different European jurisdictions?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, to a large extent, we don&#8217;t have any problem sharing data of this kind within the European Union and the Eurozone. We will focus on that initially. We are not currently considering if we can also use the digital Euro if it&#8217;s widely adopted in stores in the USA, if you&#8217;re travelling there or in the UK. Or if we&#8217;ll open it up to visitors in Europe, coming from those countries, being able to pay with it. So until that time, there will always be data which are sovereign European data.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And would the digital Euro pose a threat to financial stability by disintermediating banks?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We don&#8217;t believe so for a number of reasons. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People will not put all of their money in the digital Euro account. First of all, there is an expectation that there will be a holding limit, the maximum amount that you could put on your digital Euro account. Secondly, there will not be any interest paid on the digital Euro account. And thirdly, through the real-time funding option that we&#8217;re building into the digital Euro, there&#8217;s no need to put money in your digital Euro account if you don&#8217;t want to. And let&#8217;s be honest, a lot of people, just before salary payments come in, can&#8217;t even afford to have money spread out over different accounts anyway.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Would the digital Euro be programmable money?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, it wouldn&#8217;t. There&#8217;s a lot of buzz from a small but noisy group on social media that expects programmability. This is not on our agenda. It&#8217;s not even possible the way that we do it. There might be solutions built on top of the digital Euro that could make payments conditional. For instance, for use cases like the merchant only gets paid when the consumer identifies that the goods have been received, for instance. Or programmability beyond that is not foreseen and not expected.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, how would the digital Euro be different from stable coins and crypto assets?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, from crypto assets, it would be completely different because it&#8217;s central bank money, which has a stable value only influenced by inflation, which is also managed by us to the extent that we can. Stablecoins, again, are private money backed by, well, not even fiat money in most cases, but actually government debt, which to me has some potential interesting use cases, more on the corporate side in treasury for cross-border payments outside the Eurozone. So we believe they serve different purposes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How do you plan to compete with the innovation speed of private cryptocurrency projects?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak:<\/i><\/b> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The private crypto I don&#8217;t see really taking off in retail payments for now. For sure, a central bank will never be the most innovative party to play in a field like this, which is why we expect that the private sector can innovate on top of the digital Euro. The digital Euro will be a platform of basic payment forms on top of which financial services parties, licensed parties in the ecosystem, can either innovate on top of that platform or in their own private sector schemes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where does the digital Euro project currently stand, and what are the next steps?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So we&#8217;re currently wrapping up three different things. One is finalising the 0.9 version of the rulebook for the digital Euro so that we can consult it with our rulebook development group, which has all the stakeholders in the market represented. We are completing the sourcing of five core components to build the digital Euro, which we&#8217;re sourcing externally with external parties. And we are preparing for the next phase that we will propose to the governing council of the Euro system and the ECB towards the end of October.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What are the biggest technical or regulatory hurdles that could delay these timelines?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, as I mentioned before, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in order to launch a digital Euro, there will have to be a digital Euro regulation, which, amongst others, gives it legal tender status, which provides a compensation model,\u00a0 which outlines the liabilities between the players in the field. And we cannot do anything before that regulation is adopted. That&#8217;s more on the regulatory side. On the technical side, I think that we can solve most of the problems. The most challenging one, because it&#8217;s not been done before, is the offline digital Euro, which requires not only access to NFC, but also access to secure elements in phones, which have to be arranged with the OEMs in the markets,\u00a0 and which also covers questions that currently not even all smartphones have secure elements embedded in them. And because we won&#8217;t be able to track individual transactions, we have to be ultra careful that nobody can make new tokens, new offline digital Euros, without us noticing. So that requires a lot of thinking and developing. We will be working with a third party also on that particular part.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What are the primary objectives of the digital Euro project? And what role will it play for the future of European payments?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So first of all, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it&#8217;s a complementary means of payment, just like physical cash is today, to other private sector means of payment. It is supposed to strengthen the European sovereignty in payments, to provide additional resilience in payments, in case a private sector solution suddenly doesn&#8217;t work for one reason or the other, to maintain the access for all citizens to use central bank money to pay in all use cases imaginable, and to maintain access to these kind of solutions for everyone. A lot of the current new solutions are digital only and will only be distributed through smartphones. We will make sure that people, even without a bank account or without a modern smartphone, can use the digital Euro.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So the last question for you is a personal kind. What would you be doing in your life if not this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I don&#8217;t really know. I&#8217;m really happy I&#8217;m here. I&#8217;ve worked in payments for over 30 years, mostly in the private sector, and I definitely wanted to do something that I had not done before. And this is certainly something that&#8217;s not been done before, and also something where I feel I&#8217;m contributing to something bigger than just a successful product. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong style=\"color: var(--global-palette3); font-family: inherit; font-size: 28px;\">Let\u2019s Conclude!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks, everyone for joining us for this month&#8217;s episode of Outgrow&#8217;s Marketer of the Month. That was Eric Tak, who is the Head of Division, Digital Euro &#8211; Product Proposition at European Central Bank.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Eric Tak: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Great to be here. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Saksham Sharda: <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check out the website for more details and we&#8217;ll see you once again next month with another marketer of the month.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We interviewed Eric Tak  in this episode of the Marketer of the Month Podcast to discuss border-free wallets!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":62972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[605],"tags":[1009,673],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.1 - 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