Piero Cipollone, the Italian member of the European Central Bank’s Executive Board, says the digital euro will cap how much a person can hold but not how much they can spend. In an interview with Milano Finanza, conducted by Roberto Sommella on 21 October and published by the ECB on 24 October 2026, he said a payment larger than the wallet balance would be completed automatically from the linked bank account. He also described offline payments between two devices, said small shops pay up to four times the fees of large operators, and counted 36 firms, seven of them Italian, already working on the project.
None of this is law yet. Cipollone repeated that the ECB can only decide to issue the digital euro once the regulation under negotiation in Brussels is adopted, which he hopes will happen by the end of 2026. That calendar is not new: Christine Lagarde gave the same pilot window and the same legal target on 17 October, as we reported in our piece on Lagarde’s 2027 pilot and the stalled law, which also covers where Parliament and Council still disagree. The Milano Finanza interview adds how the thing would work for the person paying and for the shop being paid.
Digital euro holding limit: a cap on the balance, not on spending
Asked whether there would be a limit on holdings, Cipollone answered: “Yes, but there won’t be limits on payments.” The cap applies to the amount of digital euro sitting in a wallet. It does not stop the holder from paying more than that.
His example was a car. If a payment exceeds the available balance, “it will be possible to take the remainder automatically from the linked current account.” The ECB’s digital euro team has a name for this. In a September 2022 presentation to the Euro Retail Payments Board it called the feature the “reverse waterfall”: extra money is pulled from the linked bank account and the payment is then completed in digital euro at its full value, so the buyer does not have to top up in advance.
Cipollone spoke only of money going out. The same 2022 presentation describes the mirror case, the “waterfall”: when an incoming payment would push a wallet above its limit, the payment is completed and the excess is pushed to the linked bank account. That document dates from the investigation phase, and the final rules will be set in the scheme rulebook.
So the limit is a ceiling on savings in central bank money, not on what the digital euro can buy. A large purchase would not be refused for lack of digital euro, as long as the current account behind the wallet holds enough.
Why have a cap at all? Cipollone tied it to financial stability, “particularly in crisis situations”, when people might pull deposits out of banks and park them in a central bank wallet. He said the ECB’s analyses show that “with a properly calibrated limit, there will be no negative effects on the banking system.” He gave no amount, and the interview does not say who would set it.
Offline payments by bringing two devices together
The second new point concerns payments without a connection. Cipollone said the digital euro would work in shops during a power cut and in remote areas where the internet is weak or missing. “It will suffice to bring two devices together, as when using a contactless card today,” he said.
The payment would go straight from payer to payee, without passing through the internet, so merchants could keep taking payments when other digital methods are down. He also presented it as a privacy feature: offline, the details of a transaction “remain exclusively between the payor and the payee”, which he compared with cash.
That is a narrower promise than full anonymity. The interview is about offline use only and says nothing about what data banks or the Eurosystem would see when people pay online.
Small shops pay up to four times more in fees, Cipollone says
The merchant argument carries the interview’s most striking figure. According to Cipollone, the fees a small shop pays today “can be up to four times higher than those paid by large operators.” He did not say which payment methods he meant or where the comparison comes from.
His case is that the digital euro would add a European competitor and that “the caps on costs laid down by law” would bring fees down for those with less bargaining power. Those caps belong to the regulation still under negotiation, so their level is as open as the rest of the text. A bakery in Naples or Lyon cannot yet work out what it would pay.
He linked fees to a wider dependence. Online purchases are normally paid by card, and two thirds of those card payments, he said, run on non-European schemes. In most euro area countries that dependence reaches physical shops too, because they have no domestic scheme of their own.
Two apps, no ECB account, and banks stay in front
On access, Cipollone described two routes. Banks could add the digital euro to the apps their customers already use, and the Eurosystem would offer a standardised app with the basic functions. Even with the ECB’s app, he said, “your relationship will nevertheless still be with your own bank; the ECB will not open accounts for people.”
The interviewer put to him that banks fear being left out. “The digital euro has not been devised as a replacement for banks,” he said, adding that banks and other authorised intermediaries would distribute it, manage customers and build services on top. Asked whether only the digital euro might one day remain, he said he did not think so: cash, the digital euro and bank services should coexist.
There will be no annual issuance limit like the one set for banknotes and coins; use will depend on demand from people and firms. And the digital euro will be a means of payment, “not a tool that the ECB will be able to use to tell people how to spend their own money.” His examples were a coffee, online shopping, a bill and a transfer to another person.
On security he described encryption, data segregation and regular simulated attacks, with the infrastructure spread across several European regions so that the service continues if one part goes down. The platform, he said, is being developed exclusively by European providers.
Seven Italian firms in the pilot, by the ECB’s own list
Milano Finanza is an Italian paper, and the Italian details stand out. Cipollone said “36 market operators, of which seven are Italian, are already collaborating in the preparatory works.” The ECB is now also inviting e-commerce and mobile commerce merchants to join.
Seven matches the ECB’s own table. The annex to its 14 July press release lists each provider with its application country, and seven carry Italy: Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banca Sella, isybank, Nexi Payments, Numia, Poste Italiane and UniCredit. No other country has as many; Germany has five. Some Italian outlets, including 9colonne and Il Sole 24 Ore, counted eight in July by adding Satispay, an Italian company whose Satispay Europe applied from Luxembourg, as blockchain that runs exactly as written when it is called, holding and moving funds according to its code, without an intermediary able to change the outcome.">smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool diverge, compared with simply holding the same tokens in a wallet. It becomes permanent when the provider withdraws.">Il Sole 24 Ore noted at the time.
He also gave a figure on how fast Italians are moving online. According to “the latest available data”, online payments in Italy grew from 6% of the total in 2019 to 24% in 2024, and he expects they have grown more since. Italy, he noted, has Bancomat, a domestic scheme for paying in local shops that most euro area countries lack.
Cipollone spoke just after a meeting of the executive committee of the Italian Banking Association (ABI). He said they mainly discussed tokenisation, and that he briefed the bankers on the legislation and on the Eurosystem’s preparations.
A 2027 pilot with real transactions, a law hoped for by the end of 2026
“In 2027 we will already launch a pilot based on real transactions,” Cipollone said, carried out by staff of the ECB and the national central banks. The ECB pilot page sets the start in the second half of 2027 for 12 months, with staff of the ECB and 19 national central banks testing alongside the 36 providers and selected merchants. E-commerce and mobile commerce merchants have until 27 October 2026 to express interest.
On the bigger decision he was careful. “The decision can only be taken once the legislative negotiations that are under way in Brussels have been concluded,” he said. He hopes the regulation is adopted by the end of the year, so that the Governing Council can take a formal decision on issuance.
Even then, a decision would not put digital euros in wallets the next day. The law would allow the rulebook of technical rules to be completed, and banks, payment operators and merchants will need time to adapt their systems, he said. The interviewer suggested a rollout as early as 2029 if the law passes this year. Cipollone answered only on the sequence, law first and decision second, and did not confirm the year.
He framed the project as a matter of not depending on others for an essential service. “In recent years Europe has learned that, for some essential services, we cannot rely only on third parties,” he said, citing energy and defence. He added: “Sovereignty doesn’t mean shutting third parties out.”
The interview in figures
| Point | What Cipollone said (21 Oct 2026) |
|---|---|
| Holding limit | Yes, on the wallet balance; amount not given |
| Payment limit | None; the excess is taken from the linked current account |
| Firms in preparatory work | 36, of which 7 Italian (matches the ECB’s July list by application country) |
| Small-shop fees | Up to 4 times those of large operators |
| Online payments in Italy | 6% of the total in 2019, 24% in 2024 |
| Online card payments on non-European schemes | Two thirds |
| Pilot | 2027, real transactions by ECB and national central bank staff |
| Annual issuance limit | None, use set by demand |
| Law | Hoped for by the end of 2026; issuance decision only after |
Digital euro and euro stablecoins: where the comparison stands
Cipollone did not mention stablecoins in the interview, so nothing here is his view on EURC or on Qivalis, the bank consortium that has its Dutch e-money licence but no launch date yet. The comparison that follows is Coindaro’s. A capped wallet with automatic top-ups from a bank account is built for paying, not for holding large balances, which is where euro stablecoins regulated under MiCA are used today, on exchanges and in DeFi. Where the two could meet is everyday payments, the same ground cards hold now. Our stablecoin guide covers the private side; our guide to fiat money and how central banks manage the euro explains the public one.
What is still open
The interview leaves the main numbers to the legislators. The size of the holding limit, the level of the merchant fee caps and the data rules for online payments all depend on the text the European Parliament and the Council are still negotiating. Whether they agree by 31 December, as Cipollone hopes, is not known.
The first date on the ECB side is closer: the merchant call for the pilot closes on 27 October. The pilot itself is due to start in the second half of 2027 and run for 12 months.