It’s fancy instant payments, which most of the developed world already has. The question is which unnecessary intermediaries do you continue to remove as you refactor legacy financial infra.

Credit card rails are expensive legacy rails, that part of the stack is the target to disrupt in this context. In the context of the digital euro, you can think of it as a demand deposit account backed by the central bank (as most fiat deposit accounts are in some way) that is portable between banks, like you’d move a US investment account that can hold securities between brokers with ACATS at the clearinghouse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415854 (recent subthread with some related context)

Global instant payment system map: https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PYMNTS-Rea... [pdf]

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drstewart 4 hours ago | parent [-]

>It’s fancy instant payments

That's a massive oversimplification, and doesn't even address the OP's point that directly challenges this.

Lot of errors in your post.

Not to mention the fact that you confuse Mastercard and Visa for "credit card rails" further underscores this.

	▲	toomuchtodo 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The exact technical details aren’t terribly relevant imho, just that the EU has found the will to implement a superior value storage and transfer system, a benefit of which is avoiding US entities and infra. I have intentionally simplified for the layman audience, and understand if you take issue with my simplification. Your comment history shows a decidedly anti EU sentiment, including against EU sovereignty (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515118, for example), make of that what you will. > How come the EU is making a "digital sovereignty" push? Why are only EU people allowed to compete for EU services? Are there no evil people in the EU? I like tech that improves efficiency (disintermediating unnecessary US commercial payment processors) and decouples from proven threat actors and nation state aggressors, that is my interest on this topic, ymmv.