Skip to: Skip to navigation Skip to content Skip to footer

HomeMediaExplainersResearch & PublicationsStatisticsMonetary PolicyThe €uroPayments & MarketsCareers

\\ \\ Piero Cipollone\\ \\ Member of the ECB's Executive Board

Interview with Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, conducted by Élisabeth Montaufray-Bureau on 10 July 2026

What is your view on last Thursday’s vote by the European Parliament to back the digital euro?

It was a very important step because the Parliament represents Europe’s citizens and its endorsement lends great legitimacy to the project. The Parliament voted almost 70% in favour of the digital euro. It took the time to listen to all European stakeholders – merchants, citizens and banks – and to other central banks outside the euro area. This democratic process has helped ensure that the digital euro is completely robust. The digital euro will safeguard the freedom of Europeans to choose how they pay. That was the issue at stake in the vote.

What would you say to those that voted against the digital euro?

I also listened carefully to those who voted against it. They had two main reasons for doing so: protection of privacy and concerns about a form of Big Brother-style surveillance. But we designed the digital euro with these concerns in mind: it will offer the highest degree of privacy currently possible with today’s technology.

When you pay offline, the digital euro will offer cash-like levels of privacy: the transaction details will be known only to the payer and the payee. And even when you make payments online, the central bank will not know that you’re the one who made them. All the data will be encrypted; only your bank will know that you made the payment.

For you, is the digital euro a purely technical project or a geopolitical one?

Providing a means of payment is at the heart of a central bank’s mandate. That is what we do now by providing cash and issuing euro banknotes. And we will continue to do so.

But the economy has evolved. Today, one-third of Europeans’ transactions take place online, on e-commerce websites. Naturally, we can’t use cash for these payments. It is therefore very important to provide Europeans with a digital form of cash to complement the physical banknotes and coins we are familiar with.

The digital euro is a technical response in the truest sense of the word. But it also brings benefits in the current geopolitical context. Currently, most of the infrastructure that people in Europe use to make their everyday payments is not in European hands. That’s a problem for the central bank, whose role is to ensure the smooth functioning and continuity of payment systems. The digital euro will address this issue.

How will the pilot due to start in September 2027 work?

It will initially be a small-scale pilot of the digital euro. It will involve merchants, banks and, as users, employees of the ECB and the national central banks.

In March we invited European payment service providers, including banks, to take part in this pilot. More than 50 applied. We selected 36 participants – including French providers like BPCE (a banking group that includes Banque Populaire, Caisse d’épargne and Crédit Coopératif) and Worldline (a leading company specialised in payment processing). This selection enables us to cover a wide range of profiles across almost the entire euro area. We will work together to prepare for the pilot, which we plan to launch in September 2027 for a period of 12 months.

What is the business model of the digital euro?

The current business model for card payments involves six main players: the customer, the merchant receiving the payment, the banks – namely the customer’s bank and the merchant’s bank – the technical service provider that processes the transaction and, finally, the owner of the card scheme, such as Visa, Mastercard or Cartes Bancaires, which defines the rules of the game. At present, merchants must pay a percentage of the transaction value to cover both the card scheme’s fees and the fees charged by the banks involved in the transaction.

By contrast, with the digital euro, the ECB and the national central banks will set the rules of the game, while respecting the legislator’s choices and involving all stakeholders. And the ECB will neither collect any scheme fees nor charge any fees for processing transactions. This will create savings that can be shared among merchants and banks. How these savings will be distributed is still being discussed by European legislators. But what is certain is that merchants will benefit. They will be required to accept the digital euro for digital payments, just as they are required to accept cash today. But they will be protected by a cap on the fees they have to pay.

Security is our top priority, especially given the advances in artificial intelligence.