The European Central Bank (ECB) told the European Parliament that a central bank digital currency for the Eurozone could keep payments flowing during major outages or cyberattacks. ECB board member Piero Cipollone made the comments in Brussels on Thursday, arguing the new tool could provide business continuity when consumer-facing apps fail.
Cipollone explained that if a cyberattack disabled a bank’s mobile app but left its backend systems operational, customers could still access their accounts through an ECB-run digital euro application, preserving essential payment and account access while banks restore normal services.
He also stressed the value of offline functionality. An offline-capable digital euro could act as a failsafe during power cuts or network blackouts that take conventional payment rails offline. Cash, he noted, remains the only true fallback today, but cash use is declining and may be hard to access in some emergencies.
The ECB has studied a digital euro for several years, motivated in part by competition from stablecoins and non-bank payment platforms such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal. A Eurozone CBDC is being discussed as a public alternative to private digital payment options and as a way to strengthen payments resilience across the region.
What this means: a digital euro could improve continuity and consumer access during technical failures, but it brings trade-offs. Centralised infrastructure can create new single points of failure, and an ECB-managed payment app raises privacy and operational-security questions. Implementing robust offline modes requires strong cryptography, secure device design and clear legal frameworks to protect users and limit systemic risk.
No implementation timeline was provided. Policymakers will need to weigh resilience and accessibility benefits against privacy, security and governance concerns as the project moves from research toward any potential rollout.
Source: European Central Bank. Read the original coverage for full details.