 I hand over to you, Mr. Fanetta, the floor is yours. Thank you very much and good morning to everybody. It is a great pleasure for me to open this conference on the new horizon for European payments. And it is an immense pleasure to welcome at the European Central Bank, although only remotely unfortunately, Commissioner McKeonis, with whom I'm sure we will continue the intense and constructive cooperation we had with Vice President Dombrovsky. Payments are indispensable to our daily lives and to the functioning of our economies. They allow money to fulfill its role as a dependable means of exchange and thereby help to maintain trust in our currency. As central bankers, we have therefore been tasked with ensuring the smooth functioning of the payment systems. To my speech today, I want to address the transformation that is taking place in the payments landscape. The European market is registering significant progress due to the digital revolution. However, the transition to a digital payments market may create inefficiencies and risks that require inadequate response by European authorities in order to ensure that payments continue to serve citizens well. Digital technologies are changing our economies. They affect the way people consume and the way companies produce and sell goods and services. E-commerce sales, for example, have doubled in the euro area over the past six years and have jumped by one third during the lockdown compared to pre-crisis levels. Radical innovation and new players are shaping the payment market and have the potential to bring more choice, efficiency and inclusion to payments. But an uncontrolled transition could lead to more complexity, higher concentration, lower standards and reduced autonomy of European payments, generating risks for consumers and financial stability. Central banks have an inherent interest in accompanying the digital transition so that payments remain safe, efficient and inclusive. Today must be alert and respond to three trends that are shaping the payments landscape. The first trend is the evolving preferences of European consumers and businesses. While cash is still the main way people make retail payments in the euro area, its role is diminishing. Cash increasingly accounts for a smaller share of point of sale and person-to-person transactions in the euro area. In terms of the volume of total transactions, it declined from 79% in 2016 to 73% in 2019. The parallel expansion of cashless transactions has been largely driven by card payments, which have increased from 19% to 24% in terms of volume. The trend towards cashless payments has been accelerated by the pandemic. There has been a surge in online payments by households and a shift towards contactless payments in shops. About 41% of respondents to a recent survey say they have reduced their use of cash. The vast majority of them expect to continue to pay less with cash after the pandemic is over. Against this background, the euro system has a responsibility to ensure that costless risk-free payment options remain available to all. This includes ensuring continued access to cash. The second trend we need to respond to is the evolving structure of the payment market, which risks becoming both more fragmented and more concentrated in each segment. On the one hand, the acceleration towards digital payments is adding to the diversity of payments methods. But it is also increasing market fragmentation and complexity. New FinTech players increase potential competition and innovation, but only a fraction of their innovative payment solutions are usable for the most common transactions, such as online in shops and peer-to-peer. On the other hand, there is a risk of excessive concentration and insufficient competition in each market segment. Europe is already experiencing the dominance of a handful of payment service providers. PayPal dominates online payments, while Visa and Mastercard handled more than two-thirds of card payment transactions in Europe in 2018. In the future, concentration might be exacerbated by the ability of global technology firms, the so-called big techs, to leverage their large customer bases and offer payment services in Europe and globally, initially bundling them with their other products and gradually extending them to broader use cases online and in shops. Given the strong network effects in payments, these firms could acquire excessive market power. The euro system must respond to these risks by facilitating market entry and diversity in the supply of payment services, in particular by European players. This would foster competition in all parts of the payments value chain, ensuring that Europe can be at the cutting edge of innovation and efficiency to the benefit of consumers. The third trend we need to consider is the increased risks that would be associated with dependence on foreign payment instruments and technologies. While openness to global competition is crucial to foster innovation, excessive dependency on foreign, private, or public digital means of payment and technologies could lead to adverse effects. These relate, for example, to the ownership of critical data or issues of traceability in the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing, and tax evasion. Also, a payment market that relies on technology designed and controlled elsewhere may not be fit to support our single market and single currency and could be vulnerable to external disruption, such as cyber threats. Let me now shift to the euro system response to these changes in the payments landscape. Faced with a changing pilot payment landscape, the euro system has put in place a comprehensive strategy to foster a competitive market that is capable of responding to changing consumer preferences and is rooted into the EU framework and our single currency. I will briefly explain the essential elements of our payment strategy. Let me start with cash. In spite of the reduction in the use of cash for payments, the demand for euro banknotes is increasing at an annual rate of about 10% and accelerated sharply at the onset of the pandemic. In response to these developments, the euro system is carefully planning its activities related to the cash supply chain, production, storage, distribution, and recirculation in order to ensure it remains resilient. We are well prepared to ensure the continued availability of banknotes, including in-crisis situations. Our stocks of cash in each country at euro system level and for all banknotes denominations are continuously monitored and scenario analysis are used to anticipate any risk of depletion and react accordingly. Looking ahead, we have recently launched our cash 2030 strategy to ensure that banknotes remain widely available and accepted as a competitive, reliable payment instrument and store of value that can be owned and used directly by all consumers. We welcome the decision of the European Commission in the context of its retail payment strategy for the European Union to reconvene the euro legal tender expert group in 2021 to examine developments regarding the acceptance and availability of euro banknotes. The second pillar of our strategy is our retail payment strategy. The euro systems retail payment strategy aims to foster competitive and innovative payments by providing cutting-edge payments infrastructures and supporting pan-European solutions. A fundamental component of our strategy addresses the need for pan-European initiatives that allow consumers and merchants to have easy access to efficient payments. In 2019, the ECB's governing council formulated five objectives that any such initiative would need to fulfill. First, pan-European reach and seamless customer experience. Second, convenience and low cost. Third, safety and security. Fourth, European brand and governance and finally global acceptance. We welcome initiatives by European players to create unified pan-European payment solutions provided that they fulfill these objectives. The recently launched European payment initiative seeks to replace national schemes for card, online and mobile payments with a unified card and digital wallet that can be used across Europe. To succeed, it will need to overcome the existing fragmentation of national card schemes with a view to covering the whole EU and offering a credible alternative to global players. Other initiatives are in the pipeline and we will assess whether they comply with our five objectives. Another key element of our retail payment strategy is the fast deployment of instant payments which allow households and businesses to get access to their funds immediately as the payment is completed and in central bank money, thus eliminating any financial risk for either the payer or the payee. In 2018, the Euro system introduced a powerful platform for the continuous settlement of instant payments, the so-called TIPS infrastructure, putting the Euro area at the forefront of retail payments. In order to make instant payments available to everyone in Europe, we have recently taken important steps to ensure pan-European instant payments by the end of 2021 via our infrastructure tips. We are cooperating closely with the European Commission. In fact, the European Commission's retail payment strategy for the European Union complements our own strategy by setting the stage for European legislation to contribute to objectives we share, such as making instant payments the new normal and making cross-border payments easier, faster and cheaper. Let me now shift to Oversight. As the root of our Oversight activity lies, the principle of same business, same risks, same requirements. Our new Oversight framework for electronic payments instrument, schemes and arrangements, the so-called PISA framework, will be released for public consultation in the coming weeks and will extend this approach to all relevant actors in the payment market, including the big tech firms. A properly designed Oversight framework is necessary to guarantee competition and innovation in the payment market, while limiting the risks that new products and new players may generate. To avoid regulatory arbitrage and ensure a level playing field, it is critical that issuers and service providers of significant stable coins are also regulated, supervised and overseen at European level. The European Commission's legislative proposal on crypto assets, the so-called MICA, are an important step in this regard. Together with its proposal on digital operational resilience and our revised Oversight framework, they will address the broader risks and threats posed by new products and players. If new, potentially systemic products are introduced before these regulatory and oversight initiatives are completed, this could endanger the integrity of the European payment system. Let me now shift to the digital euro. The euro system's work on a digital euro is an insight into the future of retail payments. Digital euro would make digital central bank money available to everyone. It would provide access to a simple, cost-less, risk-free and trusted digital means of payment that is accepted throughout the entire euro area. The possible issuance of a digital euro alongside cash would be driven by the same objectives I have already outlined, responding to evolving consumer preferences, fostering a competitive payments market and preserving European autonomy. A digital euro would both shape and promote the digitalization of payments, in turn supporting the digitalization and modernization of the European economy. If properly designed, it would allow banks to build new business models and offer their customers cheaper and innovative services. It would increase privacy in digital payments, thanks to the involvement of the central bank, which unlike private suppliers of payment services has no commercial interest related to consumer data. A digital euro could become necessary in a number of scenarios. For example, if people would become reluctant to use cash, if other electronic payment methods could become unavailable or went to natural disasters, or if foreign digital means of payments threatened to largely displace domestic money. But introducing a digital euro could boost challenges. Some are technical, such as cyber risks and the protection of privacy. Others are related to the possible impact on the activity of banks, on financial stability and on monetary policy. A properly designed digital euro would need to address such risks. We have started to explore appropriate strategies, for example in relation to the remuneration of digital euro holdings and the protection of privacy. As the issuer of our currency, the euro system is carefully examining the economic, technological, societal and strategic implications of the possible issuance of a digital euro. We have recently published our report on a digital euro and started a public consultation. We will carefully examine the feedback we receive, so that if and when developments around us make it necessary, we will be ready to issue a digital euro that meets the needs of Europeans. Let me conclude. European authorities must be attentive and ready to respond to the ongoing transformation of the European payments landscape. They must ensure that digital payments are underpinned by a competitive and innovative market capable of meeting consumer demand while preserving European sovereignty. To reach these objectives, the euro system has set out a comprehensive strategy based on complementary elements, which range from the provision of cash to the promotion of pan-European payment solutions, the fast deployment of instant payments in the entire euro area, the introduction of a new comprehensive oversight framework, embracing new products and players, and the preparation for the possible issuance of a digital euro. Our action on these fronts includes cooperation with the European Commission and other European institutions will help to foster a resilient and innovative European payments market that will strengthen confidence and trust in the euro. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you, Mr. Panetta, for providing insights into the euro system's comprehensive strategy to foster a competitive market for retail payments. It seems we have interesting times ahead of us. And with this, I want to welcome our next keynote speaker.