In a survey published yesterday by the European Central Bank (ECB), 321 Europeans spoke about the advantages and disadvantages of the developing European digital wallet. While personal data will not be passed on to merchants, a second report claims that KYC will be required to open a digital euro account. What is it really?
The results of the study on the European digital wallet
As work on the creation of a European digital wallet accelerates, the European Central Bank (ECB) has just published a survey on the use of this wallet by a test group of 321 people. Among the many feedbacks made by the participants, the issue of personal data was mentioned several times.
Since the ECB repeatedly emphasizes its desire to create a means of payment equivalent to cash, the latter should in theory confer the same level of anonymity. As a result, we learn in the study that merchants did not have access to the personal information of their customers paying for their purchases with the digital wallet available.
“ Purchases made this way are flagged in the user’s activity history or on their bank statement by a simple transaction number and the amount paid – no names or other information are displayed. The recipient of the payment does not know the name of the payer, and even joint account holders do not know to whom the payment was made. »
However, participants in the experiment were able to link this digital wallet to a bank account. When the wallet user used this feature to pay for a product or service, the transaction was sent from his bank to the merchant.
In this context, the wallet only acts as an intermediary, like the Google Pay and Apple Pay apps. While the two digital giants have access to their users’ personal data, what about data from the digital wallet issued by the ECB?
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A mandatory KYC digital wallet?
According to the ECB’s third report on the investigation phase of the digital euro published yesterday, a KYC will be mandatory for citizens wishing to create a digital euro account :
” The onboarding service for the digital euro refers to the identification and authorization steps necessary for intermediaries to open a digital euro account to an end user (consumer or merchant), including the association of an instrument of payment. Onboarding must ensure a number of important checks, such as KYC. »
In order to get more details about the difference between the European digital wallet and a digital euro account, we contacted Silvia Margiocco, press officer at the ECB. For the moment, no response has been delivered to us.
Far from the idea of a wallet protecting privacy as envisaged by cypherpunks, the European digital wallet is lacking on this point by requiring the recording of personal data. It is in this context that Bitcoin (BTC) makes sense : it protects the personal data of individuals, thus preventing third-party entities from having access to it.
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Source: ECB
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Always enthusiastic about new technologies, I gradually moved closer to Web3-related activities during the year 2021. Over time, I wanted to add my stone to the building. It was then that I became an editor, with the aim of explaining cryptocurrency-related topics to as many people as possible.
Timothy Bourbotte
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