Interview with Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, conducted by Élisabeth Montaufray-Bureau on 10 July 2026Fortunately, the ECB already has extensive experience with payment systems. The Eurosystem – comprising the ECB and the euro area national central banks – currently operates three of them. One is a payment system called T2, which is used for interbank payments. Every eight days, T2 processes a volume of transactions with a value equivalent to the euro area’s annual GDP. Another system is used to settle securities transactions while the third enables instant payments. All of these systems, which are vital to the functioning of the European economy, meet the highest cybersecurity standards, and we continuously test and strengthen them. We will do the same for the digital euro.

How much will the digital euro cost?

There are two aspects to this: the cost for the Eurosystem and the cost for the banks that will provide this service. These costs will depend on the final decisions taken by the legislators, notably regarding the number of digital euro accounts that each European will be allowed to hold. However, we currently estimate that the total development cost for the Eurosystem would be around €1.3 billion, with annual operating costs running to approximately €320 million.

These costs will be more than offset by the revenues generated by the Eurosystem from issuing the digital euro, as is already the case with cash: this income is known as seigniorage.

The annual costs for euro area banks of preparing for the digital euro over a four-year period would amount to no more than 3.4% of the budget they spend each year on updating their IT systems. The costs therefore remain manageable.

What is the difference between Wero and the digital euro?

There are two main differences. For one, the digital euro is central bank money, just like cash. Wero, by contrast, allows you to make payments using the money held in your bank account. The other difference is that the digital euro will be accepted by all European merchants. Users will be certain that they can pay with the digital euro throughout the euro area, whether connected to the internet or not. They will be able to use it for in-store, person-to-person and online payments.

The digital euro will also benefit solutions such as Wero. By using digital euro standards, these solutions will be able to more easily expand their acceptance among a wider range of merchants. And by integrating the digital euro, they can ensure that their users are able to make payments in all situations, anywhere in the euro area. So in places where Wero is not yet accepted, users could still pay using digital euro, allowing the transaction to go through.

This is one of the benefits of the digital euro: it will help European payment solutions expand and will support innovation. It will help improve the services available to Europeans while also reducing transaction fees, which are ultimately reflected in the prices consumers pay.

Leaving the digital euro aside, the ECB will hold another monetary policy meeting at the end of July. Why raise your key interest rates when the inflation we are seeing today is being imported through higher oil prices?

We are currently facing an energy shock, driven notably by oil prices. When energy prices rise, they have three main effects. The first is a direct effect: for example, consumers pay more at the petrol pump. The second is an indirect effect: an increase in energy prices pushes up the costs of producing goods and leads to higher prices, including for food. The third type of effect is what we call second-round effects: when households and businesses expect inflation to remain high, firms raise prices to protect their profit margins while employees seek larger wage increases. If these adjustments become too pronounced, they create additional costs that, in turn, feed into inflation.

Today we are observing the first two effects but not the third. What the ECB can do through its monetary policy is prevent these second-round effects from taking hold and convince households and businesses that inflation will return to our 2% target over the medium term. That is why we monitor inflation expectations very closely. If medium to long-term inflation expectations remain anchored at 2%, inflation will return to our target and we will have done our job.