- The European Central Bank (ECB) expects to announce standards this summer for a potential digital euro.
- A 12-month pilot is planned from late 2027, aiming for technical readiness for a possible issuance around 2029.
- The digital euro is designed as infrastructure for private providers, aiming to reduce dependence on international card schemes.
The European Central Bank (ECB) expects to announce technical standards this summer for a potential digital euro, a move intended to help payment providers and merchants prepare their systems. ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone told EU lawmakers that finalizing this rulebook would allow new terminals and payment apps to ship with the necessary payment rails already embedded, giving European companies a head start. Consequently, the ECB’s digital euro pilot, for which it opened a call for licensed payment service providers earlier in March, will run for 12 months starting in the second half of 2027 to test payments in a controlled environment.
Cipollone said the goal is to provide pan-European rails that reduce dependence 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. Meanwhile, earlier ECB analysis estimated that a digital euro could cost EU banks 4-6 billion euros (approximately $4.3-$6.5 billion) over four years, an amount the central bank described as roughly 3% of their annual information technology maintenance budget, according to reports. Cipollone told lawmakers those costs should be weighed against the long-term benefits of keeping more merchant fees and scaling European payment schemes.
He reiterated that the digital euro is conceived as a public payments infrastructure that private intermediaries such as banks would use to offer wallets and services, rather than a direct-to-consumer product from the ECB. Cipollone also highlighted that the ECB wants central bank money to remain the “anchor” for future wholesale markets, pointing to its Pontes project, which tests settling tokenized securities in central bank money across different platforms. 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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