The European Central Bank sought on Thursday to allay misgivings in Germany about the launch of a digital euro, saying this form of electronic cash wouldnt be used to penalise savers or upend banks.

The ECB is exploring the launch, within the next five years, of a digital version of the euro to stem competition from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and stablecoins such as Facebooks proposed Diem, which are backed by official currencies.

But it has run into opposition in Germany, where the ECBs main shareholder, the Bundesbank, has been lukewarm about the project and popular magazine Focus wrote that a digital euro would be catastrophic for savers.

In an oped in the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, ECB board member Fabio Panetta and official Ulrich Bindseil said the digital euro would not replace physical cash.

The ECB is by no means planning to use a digital euro to enforce interest rates that are significantly more negative, Panetta and Bindseil said in the article. As long as there is cash, it will always be able to be held at an interest rate of zero percent.

In an interview with FOCUS, economist Richard Werner had said the ECB had put banks on their knees with low rates and now wanted to take the vital deposittaking business away from them.

And Bundesbank officials have often stressed a digital euro could pose risks to banks and should be studied at length before any decision is made.

But the two ECB officials said the digital euro could be designed…