Every time a central bank digital currency enters the conversation, bankers collectively clench. Piero Cipollone, a member of the European Central Bank’s Executive Board, wants them to relax.
Cipollone has been making the case that the digital euro will have minimal effects on banks, positioning the project not as a disruption to the existing financial system but as a shield against outside competition. The argument boils down to this: the real threat to European banks isn’t the ECB’s digital currency. It’s non-European card networks and the rising tide of stablecoins eating into their payments business.
The numbers behind the reassurance
Cipollone and Supervisory Board Vice-Chair Frank Elderson co-authored a blog post on March 27, 2026, laying out the specifics.
The estimated cost for banks to invest in the digital euro infrastructure sits between €4 billion and €5.8 billion over four years. That represents roughly 3.4% of the annual IT budgets of significant European banks.
