European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said on Tuesday the ECB expects to announce this summer the European standards it will use for a potential digital euro, a move intended to help payment providers and merchants ready their systems before any issuance decision.
Cipollone told European Union lawmakers that once those standards are published the ECB will collaborate with market participants so they can begin embedding them into payment terminals and other solutions as soon as possible.
He said finalizing the rulebook will allow new terminals and payment apps to ship with the required rails already integrated, giving European firms a head start once EU legislation is enacted, which the ECB anticipates in 2026.
The ECB’s digital euro pilot, for which it opened a call for licensed payment service providers in March, will run for 12 months starting in the second half of 2027, Cipollone said. The pilot will test person-to-person and point-of-sale payments in a controlled setting as part of efforts to be technically ready for possible issuance around 2029 if lawmakers approve the legal framework.
ECB says costs should be weighed
An earlier ECB analysis estimated a digital euro could cost EU banks €4–6 billion over four years, roughly 3% of their annual IT maintenance budgets, Reuters reported. Cipollone told lawmakers those costs must be weighed against long-term benefits such as retaining more merchant fees and scaling European payment schemes.
He reiterated the digital euro is designed as public payments infrastructure that private intermediaries—banks and payment service providers—would use to offer wallets and services, rather than as a direct-to-consumer product from the ECB.
Cipollone said the aim is to provide pan-European rails to reduce reliance on international card schemes, with co-badged cards and bank wallets able to switch between domestic schemes and the digital euro across the euro area.
He stressed the digital euro is intended to complement cash and bank deposits, not replace them, and noted accessibility features—voice commands and large-font displays—are being built into the reference app design to ensure inclusivity.
Cipollone also said the ECB wants central bank money to remain the “anchor” for future wholesale markets, citing its Pontes project, which tests settling tokenized securities in central bank money across different distributed ledger platforms, and the Appia roadmap for a tokenized European financial ecosystem.
In a separate speech, he outlined how tokenized central bank money could serve as the settlement asset for stablecoins and tokenized deposits.
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