Piero Cipollone: Interview with Corriere della Sera

Interview with Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, conducted by Daniele Manca on 23 September 2026

Some argue that the digital euro will end up replacing cash…

Not at all. Perhaps some people initially feared that the aim of the digital euro was to replace cash. But that is not the case. The ECB’s work to develop and ultimately introduce a new series of euro banknotes with different designs and the latest anti-counterfeiting features, is proof of that. The digital euro will complement cash, offering the same high level of security and, let me stress, at no cost to individuals, just like cash today.

So, when can we expect the digital euro? Could it be in 2029?

Yes. But let me take a step back for a moment. This is not just a technical matter, and not everything is up to the ECB.

Support for the single currency stands at over 80% in the latest Eurobarometer survey. That tells us that the project has solid foundations: people trust the euro, our common currency. But the world is changing. I hardly need to point out that we live in a digital age. We all carry a phone in our pocket. It would be strange not to complement euro banknotes with a digital form of cash, wouldn’t it?

I see. That perhaps harks back to what you learned from Federico Caffè, with his emphasis on the social dimension of economics…

More simply, alongside the cash that our parents and grandparents tell us to carry in our pockets “just in case”, we will have an app on our phones. It will be provided by the ECB, our own bank or another payment service provider, and we will be able to hold an amount of digital euro in it.

But what is the point of having a digital euro on our phones when we already have so many ways to pay, from cards such as Visa and Mastercard to payment services such as Satispay and PayPal? We can already send money with a single tap.