Cipollone: digital euro pilot in H2 2027, first issuance possible in 2029; €3,000 limit tested

Victoria Shinder16 October 2026, 14:323 min read

Piero Cipollone, member of the ECB's Executive Board, laid out where the digital euro and the Eurosystem's tokenisation projects stand in a speech at an MNI Connect webcast in Frankfurt on 6 October 2026; the Bank for International Settlements added the text to its collection of central bankers' speeches on 13 October. His framing: the question is no longer whether payments become digital, but how to keep the singleness of money, trust and stability as they do — by extending central bank money into the digital environment while keeping the two-tier system of public and private money.

The timeline. The Council of the EU agreed its position in December 2025, the European Parliament adopted its position in July 2026, and trilogue negotiations are under way, with the European Council calling for them to end by the close of this year. The ECB's Governing Council will decide on issuance only after the legislation is adopted. If that happens by the end of 2026, the ECB aims to be ready for a potential first issuance in 2029. A pilot is planned for the second half of 2027, running for 12 months, with 36 payment service providers selected from more than 50 applications; a call for e-commerce and mobile-commerce merchants opened on 15 September.

Why a public option. Cipollone said two-thirds of euro-area card payments rely on international schemes and that 13 of the 21 euro-area countries have no domestic card scheme. The ECB would not offer customer-facing services; banks and regulated providers would distribute the digital euro, the Eurosystem would bear the cost of the core infrastructure and charge no scheme or processing fees, and providers would be compensated — the precise arrangements are part of the legislative process.

Holding limits and banks. Holdings would be unremunerated and capped. At the European Parliament's request, the ECB modelled hypothetical limits of €500 to €3,000 on the balance sheets of 2,025 banks. In a business-as-usual scenario, digitalisation itself would bring an estimated €127 billion of deposit inflows by 2034, more than the projected digital-euro outflows for limits up to €3,000, so no aggregate outflow would be recorded. Leaving those inflows aside, the aggregate liquidity coverage ratio would fall from 166% to 163% at a €3,000 limit, and the net stable funding ratio from 128% to 127%. In an extreme flight-to-safety scenario, with no monetary-policy response assumed, the LCR would fall to 100% for 13 banks holding 0.3% of banking-sector assets. Cipollone stressed that the figures are illustrative and not a decision on the limit.

Wholesale: Pontes and Appia. Pontes is meant to let tokenised wholesale transactions settle in central bank money by connecting market DLT platforms with Eurosystem services; full implementation is expected by mid-2028, with a 24/7 service, more programmability and multi-currency capability. Appia covers the architecture, standards and governance for an integrated European tokenised ecosystem, with a blueprint due in 2028; its consultation drew 127 responses and its market contact group has 61 members. The aim, he said, is that a euro issued by one regulated bank stays exchangeable at par with a euro issued by another in tokenised form too.

Source: BIS central bankers' speeches (speech of 6 October 2026) — https://www.bis.org/speeches/20261013-money-digital-age-digital-euro-tokenisation-and-role-central-banks