ECB's Cipollone says Europe "cannot rely only on third parties" for payments, as two-thirds of Italy's online card payments run on non-European schemes

A member of the European Central Bank's Executive Board has made the case that Europe should not depend on outside companies for the way its citizens pay.

In an interview with the Italian financial paper Milano Finanza, conducted on October 21 and published on October 24, Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said Europe has learned that "for some essential services, we cannot rely only on third parties." He added that this sovereignty does not mean shutting other providers out.

Cipollone pointed to Italy, where he said online payments grew from 6% of all payments in 2019 to 24% in 2024, and two-thirds of online card payments go through non-European card schemes. Small shops, he said, can pay fees up to four times higher than large operators.

On the digital euro itself, he said a pilot will launch in 2027 with 36 market operators, seven of them Italian. He said the ECB hopes the regulation will be adopted by the end of this year. He described a limit on how much digital euro a person can hold in a wallet, not on how much they can spend, and said payments in shops will work offline, even during a power cut.

The interviewer raised a possible rollout as early as 2029; Cipollone did not commit to a date in the published text.