DFC

Second Deputy Governor of the Banque de France Agnès Bénassy-Quéré argues that the digital euro responds to Europe’s strategic dependence on Visa and Mastercard and rising card fees, not an abstract techno-fix. Bank cards dominate non-cash payments, yet many euro-area countries lack national schemes and rely entirely on US networks, giving them leverage over European users and pricing. Instant transfers exist but are under-used in retail due to weak commercial front-ends. Bénassy-Quéré argues that the digital euro, rolled out euro-area wide as legal tender, can break network effects, underpin a sovereign infrastructure, and complement private solutions like Wero and EuropA within unified wallets, improving resilience and autonomy. [Banque de France]

VISA's Ezechiel Copic argues that raw stablecoin velocity is a misleading proxy for “economic relevance” because it mostly reflects wholesale‑style financial activity rather than retail spending, so it must be benchmarked against Fedwire‑like turnover rather than M1. It explains that traditional M1 velocity measures how often money is used for purchases of goods and services, whereas total stablecoin velocity—calculated as on‑chain transaction volume divided by circulating supply—captures predominantly trading, settlement, and funding flows. When filtered to transactions of 250 dollars or less as a rough stand‑in for retail payments, stablecoin “retail” velocity is far below U.S. M1 velocity, implying minimal use in everyday commerce. But when compared to a financial‑system benchmark based on Fedwire transaction value relative to reserve balances, stablecoin velocity is still much lower in scale, indicating that while stablecoins show growing importance in financial markets, they remain modest relative to established wholesale infrastructures. Overall, the piece concludes that interpreting stablecoin data requires distinguishing retail from financial‑system use and recognizing that current stablecoin impact is concentrated in the latter. [VISA]

Tony McLaughlin (Ubyx) and Mike Ringer (ReStabilize) argue that regulated financial institutions should be allowed to process stablecoins as collection agents under existing banking law, analogously to cheques. They propose that banks and fintechs receive customer stablecoins, present them for redemption, and credit fiat balances, without being reclassified as crypto-asset dealers. This functional approach would make hosted stablecoin wallets commercially viable within banks and enable reusable identity and compliance credentials for self-custody wallets, expanding the effective regulatory perimeter while preserving non-custodial usage. It could shift stablecoin activity from opaque channels into supervised institutions and position the United Kingdom’s financial infrastructure for future sterling stablecoins and tokenized deposits. The key unresolved question is how legislators and supervisors will define the legal boundary between simple collection activity and broader crypto intermediation. [LinkedIn]