[Iolaum]

I m wondering why they are trying to build a competing product rather than a successor product?

The digital euro could be a good candidate here and it also aspires to have cash-like privacy features. It's also mentioned in the article as separate and hopefully non overlapping product.

[direwolf20]

CBDC euro upends the entire economic structure of the entire union, which could be very good or very bad and definitely needs to be approached with extreme caution. But card networks used with ordinary banks are a known quantity.