The European Central Bank announced an invitation to a workshop on the future of business-to-business (B2B) payments. Its work on developing the digital euro central bank digital currency (CBDC) has prioritized personal and government payments. The ECB’s separate initiative exploring DLT and wholesale central bank money settlement targets institutions. Hence, the business sector is the odd one out and it wants to see if corporates have a specific need for central bank money.
While the digital euro may not initially cover B2B payments, the CBDC work may have influenced the timing of this workshop. A question posed to workshop invitees is about holding limits on the digital euro. This fits with the digital euro’s timeline, which stipulated that the ECB would start engaging the market to calibrate the holding limits last quarter.
Another potential trigger of the workshop is Germany’s Commercial Bank Money Token (CBMT) project, which recently completed a proof of concept and is looking to move forward. A wholesale CBDC would help with interbank settlement.
The ECB mentions it’s interested in exploring the potential corporate usage of CBMT and stablecoins.
Most of all the ECB wants to find out about the potential use cases, mentioning some of the industry 4.0 programmable payment applications targeted by CBMT such as smart factories, IoT and advanced manufacturing. For example, CBMT is exploring pay-per-use machinery.
The ECB is keen to find out why existing commercial bank money can’t address corporate needs for digital payments. Plus, it wants to know whether there’s a need for access to central bank money.
Representatives from corporates, banks or payment providers should apply to take part in the workshop by 13 September.
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