Crunchfish (CFISH) Digital Euro Conference 2026 summary

Key themes and industry context

• Offline payments are an architectural choice shaping liquidity, risk, and value capture in digital payment systems.

• Failures in digital payments can cascade and disrupt society, making robust offline solutions essential for resilience and continuity.

• Legacy offline models (immediate and deferred) require trade-offs in risk and liquidity, constraining system design and scalability.

• A third model, Governed Offline, is introduced as a superior architecture that preserves system integrity and regulatory oversight.

Governed Offline model and implementation

• Governed Offline keeps funds centrally reserved, enabling local execution with defined limits and deterministic settlement.

• This model is being implemented in India’s Digital Rupee and piloted with the Bank of England for the Digital Pound, with regulatory approval achieved in 2023 by the RBI in India.

• The approach has received global endorsement and is recognized as a new standard for offline payments.

• Governed Offline supports conditional and programmable payments, enhancing flexibility and control.

Analytical framework and evaluation

• The BIG Analytical Framework assesses offline solutions on bankability, implementability, and governance.

• Governed Offline scores highest, being banking-friendly, scalable, interoperable, vendor-neutral, and regulator-aligned.

• The model ensures liquidity remains on bank balance sheets, improves funding efficiency, and minimizes implementation costs.

• It supports real privacy and avoids systemic risk transfer to user devices.