Selling the Digital Euro to Legislators (PIIE)
On April 22, 2026, the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) hosted a virtual event at which Nicolas Véron interviewed the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) Piero Cipollone on the digital euro project. As Izabella Kaminska noted on X, at one point Veron opined that the ECB’s concerns about the big US payment companies (e.g., MasterCard and VISA) pulling out of Europe is somewhat far-fetched, to which Cipollone admitted that the rhetoric is largely in play just to motivate legislators to push ahead with the digital euro. “The geopolitical risk, this is resonating much more with politicians and that’s where we saw some acceleration from the political side to put this project into focus… I must confess that before, this was a slow-moving project, at least at the legislative level. Then what happened in the last three/four years, it provided a sort of acceleration, mostly on the political side”. [PIIE]
Digitalization and Innovation – Opportunities and Risks for Financial Health (BIS)
A Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Financial Stability Institute brief argues that digital financial innovation is enhancing access to payments, credit, savings and insurance, and can help people to manage their financial obligations and have greater confidence in their financial future. However, these benefits are emerging alongside new vulnerabilities: a global surge in scams and fraud, greater overindebtedness among some digital borrowers and the use of ill-suited investment products. This mixed record challenges the presumption that inclusion automatically produces well-being, requiring supervisors to adopt outcome-focused oversight and disaggregated measurement beyond access metrics alone. Whether digital public infrastructure can systematically translate inclusion gains into durable financial health improvements at scale remains empirically unresolved. [BIS]
FYI I produce a monthly digest of digital fiat currency (DFC) developments exclusively for the official sector (e.g., central banks, ministries of finance and international financial institution (e.g., the BIS, IMF, OECD, World Bank)) plus academics and firms that are active in the DFC space (commercial banks, technology providers, consultants, etc.). (DFCs include central bank digital currency (CBDC), stablecoins and tokenized deposits.) It goes out via email on the first business day of every month, and if you’re interested in being on the mailing list, please email me at john@kiffmeister.com.
