Piero Cipollone: Interview with Milano Finanza

Interview with Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, conducted by Roberto Sommella on 21 October 2026

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.