Jürgen Schaaf has been Advisor to the Senior Management of Market Infrastructure and Payments at the European Central Bank since November 2019. He is currently focusing on central bank digital currencies and retail payments strategies. Before that, he was Counsellor to the Executive Board of the ECB (Dec 2012 - October 2019) and Secretary of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) Project Team Dec 2012 – Dec 2013). Before he joined the ECB, he was Personal Adviser to the Governor of Banque centrale du Luxembourg. In previous occupations he worked ECB watcher at Börsen-Zeitung, a German financial daily, and as Senior Economist at Deutsche Bank. He studied economics in Marburg and Canterbury/Kent (United Kingdom) and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Phillips University Marburg.