In brief
- ECB executive board member Piero Cipollone said the digital euro guarantees the maximum privacy current technology can offer, in an interview published Monday.
- Offline payments would be visible only to the payer and payee, while online the Eurosystem could not identify either party, though the banks involved could.
- The European Parliament agreed its negotiating position in July, with a pilot due in the second half of 2027 and first issuance targeted for 2029.
A digital euro would give users as much privacy as current technology allows, a European Central Bank executive board member has said, in the bank's sharpest answer yet to the charge that a central bank digital currency would let Frankfurt watch how Europeans spend.
Piero Cipollone made the claim in an interview with Italian outlet ilsussidiario.net, conducted on August 10 and published by the ECB on Monday. Asked whether the bank could monitor payment habits and track how each citizen uses the currency, he said offline payments would run directly between individuals, with the details available only to the payer and the payee.
Online, he said, the Eurosystem would not be able to identify the people making or receiving payments. Only the banks involved in a transaction could do that, including for anti-money laundering purposes.
“The digital euro guarantees the maximum level of privacy that current technology can offer,” Cipollone said.
Payments would still be visible to the commercial banks distributing the currency, which would keep the identity and reporting obligations they carry today. Privacy features are built in but do not exempt the currency from the rules applying to all money, an ECB spokesperson told Decrypt in December.
The European Parliament agreed its negotiating position on the regulation in July, and talks with member states are targeting a deal by the end of 2026. The ECB has named 36 payment providers, among them Deutsche Bank, UniCredit and Revolut, for a 12-month pilot from the second half of 2027, with first issuance targeted for 2029.
The EU, the US and CBDCs
Washington reached the opposite conclusion on the same privacy question, and in July wrote it into law. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act bars the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency until the end of 2030, after which it would need explicit authorization from Congress. The Senate passed the bill 85-5 in June, and it became law on July 11 without President Donald Trump's signature.
The ban exempts dollar-denominated currency that is open, permissionless and private, leaving the stablecoin issuers regulated under last year's GENIUS Act untouched.
Cipollone has argued that route carries a cost for Europe. In July he warned that growing stablecoin use would strip European banks of retail deposits, on top of the fees and transaction data they are already losing to mobile payment platforms.