Can Europe break free of Visa and Mastercard? MEPs stall digital euro

That's mixing apples and oranges. Digital currencies have nothing to do with credit cards.

First, consider: The Euro is already digital, as are all the other European currencies. We can easily transfer money electronically, either via our bank, or via a variety of different apps.

The "Digital Euro" (and similar proposals by other political entities) has only one purpose: Causing all of your transactions and financial data to pass through government hands.

Complete surveillance. The government knows everything about your financial life, and can intervene whenever and however it wants: from stopping an individual transaction to completely freezing your assets. De-banking made easy.

>"The project would create an electronic form of cash issued by the European Central Bank, designed to sit alongside banknotes and the payments services offered by commercial banks. Supporters argue it would give citizens direct access to digital “public” money — something that, for now, largely exists only in the form of cash."

I don't get how does the creation of a new "digital Euro" supposed to replace Visa and Mastercard, when they're just payment processors transactioning the existing euros, not specialized digital ones.

So shouldn't the EU build a Visa/Mastercard competitor instead of a new currency? What am I missing here?

Also this breaks my brain:

>"Brussels proposed a digital form of cash that could be used both online and offline. Navarrete, by contrast, is pushing for an offline-only model."

How is digital cash supposed to work offline-only? By offline do they mean without a centralized authority(like crypto) or without internet connectivity?