ECB's Cipollone Lines Up 36 Operators for the 2027 Digital Euro Pilot

Sovereignty Over Payments

Piero Cipollone, an Executive Board member at the European Central Bank, said the digital euro set for a pilot in 2027 would hand the bloc sovereignty over a payments infrastructure that currently depends on external, non-European third parties. The comments came in an interview with Italy's Milano Finance that the ECB published on Saturday, October 24, and they extend an argument the Italian central banker has made throughout this year: Europe's card and checkout rails are a strategic vulnerability, not a solved problem. “In recent years Europe has learned that, for some essential services, we cannot rely only on third parties,” he said. “We saw this with energy and we're seeing it today with defense. And the same is true for payments.” He did not name the providers in question. The scale of the dependency appears in his own earlier statements: at an April lecture in Latvia, Cipollone said two-thirds of euro-area card transactions are governed by non-European companies, and he presented the digital euro as the instrument that would put that infrastructure back under European control. Sovereignty, he told the Italian outlet, does not mean shutting foreign providers out. “It means having the power to choose and knowing that, for an essential service like payments, Europe can also rely on its own strength.” The supervisory argument anchors his case: smooth functioning of payment systems is one of the ECB's own responsibilities, and a system critically dependent on outsiders is hard for a central bank to guarantee. Cipollone also framed the timing, saying he hopes the enabling regulation is adopted by the end of this year. Until Brussels legislates, the Governing Council cannot commit to issuing the digital euro at all, which makes the file in the European Parliament and the Council of the EU the binding constraint on the whole timetable.

36 Operators, Real Transactions

The pilot will not be a sandbox exercise. Scheduled to begin in 2027, it will run on real transactions executed by staff of the ECB and the national central banks, and 36 market operators, including seven from Italy, are already collaborating on the preparations. The ECB is additionally inviting e-commerce and mobile-commerce operators to take part, which points to a trial scope covering everyday online checkout flows rather than institutional transfers alone. The digital euro is the euro area's central bank digital currency project, and its issuance is not yet decided: the Governing Council can take a formal decision only after legislative negotiations in Brussels conclude. That file has advanced in stages. The Council of the EU fixed its negotiating position in December 2025, the European Parliament followed with its own in July 2026, and three-way talks between the two institutions and the European Commission are now under way. If the regulation is adopted by the end of this year, as Cipollone hopes, the path opens to a formal issuance decision and, on the working timetable, a launch window around 2029. Two design choices will determine what the instrument actually is. A holding limit is expected, capping how much digital euro an individual can hold, and the final text will set how the retail CBDC coexists with euro-denominated stablecoins issued by European commercial banks and other private issuers, which meanwhile continue to serve payment and PayFi flows across the bloc. Neither parameter is settled until the trilogue produces a text all three institutions accept.

A Holding Cap With Consequences

Two things decide how this lands on the market. First, the holding cap: calibrated tightly, the digital euro stays a settlement utility that routes everyday payments without draining bank deposits; set loosely, it competes with private euro stablecoins for balances and the promised division of roles becomes hard to keep. Second, the 2029 horizon gives private euro stablecoins at least two more years of exclusive access to European checkout flows before an official retail instrument exists, a first-mover window that will shape merchant integrations. The euro area is also moving ahead of peers: the Bank of Japan published a pilot progress report in June 2026 without reaching an issuance decision, leaving the ECB the closest major central bank to a formal commitment.