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Parliament vote backs digital euro plan with privacy protections
The ECB official said the program will start as a small-scale pilot and that payments would be designed so the central bank would not know the payer’s identity.
An ECB official said the European Parliament’s vote for a digital euro marked an important endorsement, with lawmakers backing the plan by almost 70%. He added that the process involved listening to European stakeholders, including merchants, citizens, and banks, as well as other central banks outside the euro area.
In an interview carried by Ouest-France, Piero Cipollone said the digital euro is designed to protect privacy concerns raised by opponents. He said offline payments would have cash-like privacy, with transaction details known only to the payer and the payee, and that even for online payments the central bank would not know who made a transaction, with data encrypted and only the user’s bank able to know the payment.
Cipollone also pointed to the shift in how Europeans pay, saying about one-third of transactions take place online where cash cannot be used. He framed the digital euro as a technical response to that change, while maintaining that providing means of payment remains central to a central bank’s mandate.
On rollout, he said the digital euro will begin with a small-scale pilot involving merchants, banks, and employees of the ECB and national central banks. According to the interview, more than 50 payment service providers applied, and 36 were selected, with the program starting after an invitation sent in March to European payment service providers.