ECB: Piero Cipollone: Interview with Milano Finanza

The summary above is from the announcement ECB published on October 24, 2026.

What the announcement says

Mr Cipollone, you have just attended a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Italian Banking Association. Was the digital euro one of the topics discussed?

We mainly talked about tokenisation. On the subject of the digital euro, I provided an update on the status of the debates on the legislation in Brussels and on the progress of our internal preparations within the Eurosystem.

Since you joined the ECB, payments have become one of the main focus areas of your work. Why are they so important for Europe’s future?

Because payments constitute a strategic infrastructure for Europe and, as a central bank, ensuring the smooth functioning of payment systems falls within our mandate. Whenever we buy something online or pay for a coffee, we think about the price of what we’re buying. But we hardly ever think about how the payment is made. Yet if the payment system stops working, the economy stops working.

Will the introduction of the digital euro help with this?

Yes. Today we can use money issued by the central bank only in the form of cash. But a growing share of our economic life takes place online, where banknotes can’t be used. The digital euro fills this gap. It gives people the freedom to make payments using an instrument that is equivalent to cash in terms of its nature and characteristics, such as privacy and covering all payment needs, but which also works where cash can’t be used.

Ever more purchases are being made online. In Italy, for example, according to the latest available data, online payments grew from 6% of the total in 2019 to 24% in 2024. And I expect they’ve grown even more since then.

These online purchases are normally made via card payments and two thirds of these payments are made using non-European card schemes. For most euro area countries, this dependence on non-European operators is not limited to online payments but also extends to physical shops, because they don’t even have anything like Italy’s Bancomat that would enable payments to be made in local shops.

In short, for an essential service like payments, we are heavily dependent on an infrastructure over which we have no direct control.

So can the digital euro be described as a European digital sovereignty project?

The Eurosystem focuses on matters that are closely related to its mandate. And, as I said at the start, the smooth functioning of payment systems is one of our responsibilities. If we are critically dependent on third parties, it’s not easy to ensure this smooth functioning. In recent years Europe has learned that, for some essential services, we cannot rely only on third parties. We saw this with energy and we’re seeing it today with defence. And the same is true for payments.

The digital euro will give Europe an alternative of its own, bringing to the digital world what cash has always ensured: a secure form of public money that protects privacy and is accepted throughout the euro area.

Sovereignty doesn’t mean shutting third parties out. It means having the power to choose and knowing that, for an essential service like payments, Europe can also rely on its own strength.

Does this dependency bring any specific consequences for merchants too?

Yes, particularly for small merchants. Today the fees that a small shop pays can be up to four times higher than those paid by large operators. The digital euro will introduce a European alternative that will increase competition and, thanks to the caps on costs laid down by law, will help to reduce fees for those with less bargaining power.

From this perspective, it seems that there’s no time to waste.

Absolutely. In 2027 we will already launch a pilot based on real transactions carried out by the staff of the ECB and the other national central banks. It will serve to test the technology in real conditions and to build the digital euro hand-in-hand with the market.

ECB

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