A new study from OMFIF and Imperial College London's Centre for Financial Technology suggests that the digital euro's adoption will depend on its ease of use, with specific benchmarks for onboarding and transaction times. The research indicates that registration should take no longer than 20 minutes, peer-to-peer transfers should complete in 60 seconds or less, and in-store payments should match the roughly 12 seconds of a conventional card transaction. The ECB has proposed features like automated wallet funding and co-badging to reduce friction, but a separate ECB working paper involving about 19,000 households found that initial interest in the digital euro faded after three months. Critics, including more than 60 economists, argue it is essential for European payment sovereignty, yet a Center for Financial Studies survey found 62.3% of financial professionals consider it unnecessary, with two-thirds expecting low adoption.
