ECB's Cipollone sets 2029 digital euro target as trilogue nears deadline
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Piero Cipollone laid out the ECB's full digital money strategy: a retail digital euro moving through trilogue, and the wholesale Pontes and Appia initiatives for tokenised settlement. The speech matters for the fresh financial-stability modelling on holding limits and for the concrete 2027 pilot and 2029 issuance timeline banks now need to plan against.
- ECB aims for potential first digital euro issuance in 2029 if legislation concludes by end-2026; trilogue is under way with a Council push to finish this year.
- Modelling of 2,025 banks shows holding limits up to €3,000 leave aggregate LCR at 163% and project a €127bn deposit inflow by 2034 under business-as-usual.
- Pontes launched 21 September to settle tokenised transactions in central bank money, full implementation mid-2028; Appia blueprint targeted for 2028.
Executive summary
Piero Cipollone, a member of the ECB's Executive Board, set out the Eurosystem's strategy for digital money in a 6 October speech to the MNI Connect Webcast, covering the retail digital euro and two wholesale initiatives, Pontes and Appia. On…
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Source documents
https://www.ecb.europa.eu//press/key/date/2026/html/ecb.sp261006~0da978f159.en.htmlRead by Regulus 12 Oct 2026 at 07:42 UTC
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