Well, the primary alternative is hundreds of bank-operated payment systems - like bank transfer, debit cards etc - but these have one disadvantage, you use bank's money, one party always pays the commission, and the operator can block your funds at any moment.

The ECB speaks of "giving citizens access to central bank money" which is just financial jargon for, well, cash. Cash that you hold and can spend any way you like, by giving it at your discretion to the other party. Digital cash works in the same way, the working prototypes using GNU Taler look just like using MetaMask to pay someone, except it's much faster and doesn't use 1000 kWh per transaction.

https://krvtz.net/posts/how-eu-digital-cash-might-look-like.html