The European Central Bank has published a questionnaire to collect information from central bank digital currency (CBDC) technology providers. It is part of their ‘market research’ for the digital euro, so participants will not be compensated or receive any beneficial treatment.

Questions about the process should be submitted over the next week with cut-off dates for responses on February 17.

The information collected will be used for the implementation plan that will form part of the final report on the digital euro to be presented in autumn 2023.

“The report will allow the ECB Governing Council to make an informed decision on whether to launch a realization phase,” the ECB statement said. “However, the final decision on the issuance of a digital euro would only be taken later.” In other words, even if you build the infrastructure, it may take time to proceed with issuance.

Answering the investigation will require a lot of work because there are 29 pages of questions. While there is a 74-page euro digital briefing paper, it is still at a fairly high level. However, responses are expected to provide a range of figures for duration and cost.

Digital Euro Volume Expectations

One of the most interesting aspects of the document are the scenarios around the expected volumes of digital euros. The range of end users is from 30 million to 200 million. The most pessimistic result would be an average of 3.75 million transactions per day, with a maximum of ten times that. And the optimistic scenario is an average of 175 million transactions per day, with a peak of 1.75 billion transactions.

In terms of performance, 99% of transactions are expected to be processed within three seconds.

The division of roles between the central bank and intermediaries was specified in previous announcements, with the central bank separated from consumers and without access to personal transaction data. While intermediaries are expected to have their own fraud and risk management processes, the central bank can add another layer. And it will provide a dispute management component.

Meanwhile, the ECB has asked industry to contribute to a digital euro scheme rulebook. Recently, he also invited suggestions for digital euro programmable money use cases.