DIGITAL DEBUT

Bank of Spain approves trial of new ‘electronic Euro’

THE Bank of Spain will allow a digital euro token to be tested by payment gateway firm Monei.

It will be the first use of a digital euro in Europe.

The EURM token will be limited to a small group of people during the initial testing phase.

Users will provide feedback in

Quantum Leap

THE first trial of ultra speedy 25G PON technology has successfully been trialled in Spain on Telefonica’s existing fibre network, Nokia announced.

The trial demonstrated nose-bleed-inducing speeds of 20 gigabits per second - around 60 times faster than current high-speed internet.

Such speeds are considered necessary for some cutting edge cloud computing technology, as well as future applications such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse.

Unfortunately 25G is not a five order jump in technology for 5G mobile networks; the two are separate technologies - 25G refers to home broadband.

By Alex Trelinski

order to sort out any problems and transactions will only be conducted within Spain. Among the practical uses of the digital currency is that a merchant for example could digitise and schedule daily payments to suppliers according to what is needed on a particular day. Monthly payments could be made in daily instalments to spread costs and employees could get a choice of whether they get paid daily, weekly, each fortnight or every month.

Monei CEO, Alex Saiz, said: “The product is now ready and we will start marketing it immediately once the controlled tests are finished.”

In order to get the EURM deposited into their account, participants in the pilot will be required to enter their phone number, verify their identity using video identification and deposit real euros into their wallet through the Bizum payment app. All euros deposited will be automatically switched for digital euros, which account holders can then send to other individuals or registered companies taking part in the pilot.

All funds will be kept in two designated bank accounts