Author: Rinat Mirzaitov

The European Central Bank on Thursday kept interest rates unchanged and reiterated that inflation is expected to stabilise at its 2 percent target over the medium term, while stepping up its public call for EU lawmakers to move faster on the Regulation establishing a digital euro. The message, delivered by ECB President Christine Lagarde in Frankfurt, underlined how the central bank increasingly frames the digital euro as part of Europe’s broader competitiveness and strategic autonomy agenda. The Governing Council left the deposit facility rate at 2.00 percent, the main refinancing operations rate at 2.15 percent, and the marginal lending facility…

European banks risk undermining their own competitiveness if they fail to pursue digital innovation, according to Patrick Montagner, who set out the European Central Bank’s supervisory approach to new technologies in a keynote speech in Brussels on Tuesday. While supervisors welcome faster adoption of tools such as artificial intelligence and tokenisation, Montagner stressed that innovation must be matched by robust governance to safeguard financial stability across the euro area. Speaking at the 10th Annual FinTech and Regulation Conference, Montagner argued that “standing still means falling behind” in a banking sector facing mounting pressure from fintechs, neobanks and large technology companies.…

The EU’s plans for a digital euro have run into a political roadblock, with lawmakers in the European Parliament unable to agree on what the new form of money should actually be. The impasse threatens to delay or reshape the project just as governments and the European Central Bank are pressing to move it forward. According to multiple sources familiar with the discussions and documents seen by Euronews, divisions among political groups are so deep that rapporteurs have acknowledged they cannot yet find a common position. “We agreed to disagree,” one person involved in the talks told the outlet, summarising…

OKX has unveiled two new payment products in Europe, OKX Pay and OKX Card, positioning them as what it calls the world’s first compliant DeFi-based pay and card solution in the European Union. The launch reflects a broader push by crypto firms to move beyond trading and infrastructure, and into everyday payments, at a moment when EU regulation is beginning to offer clearer legal ground. According to OKX, the initiative is designed to address a long-standing gap between the promise of crypto payments and their limited real-world adoption. While crypto payment apps have existed for years, daily use has remained…

The European Union needs to accelerate work on a digital euro to reduce its reliance on U.S.-owned payment companies, Economic Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said this week, according to Reuters, sharpening the political case for the project amid growing geopolitical and economic tension. Speaking at the European Banking Summit in Brussels on Wednesday, Dombrovskis warned that Europe’s payments landscape is “highly dominated by non-European providers,” leaving the bloc dependent on foreign-owned companies in an increasingly polarised and fragmented world. He argued that this dependence poses tangible risks to Europe’s resilience and its ability to act autonomously. The comments come as the…

The European Central Bank has launched a targeted call for technical service providers to help prepare Europe’s payments market for a potential digital euro, signalling a shift from high-level design debates toward concrete operational planning across the euro area. In a notice published on 27 January 2026, the ECB said it would host two expert-level workshops in early March focused on the role that technical service providers, or TSPs, could play in supporting payment service providers during the next phase of the digital euro project. The move follows the ECB Governing Council’s October 2025 decision to advance the project toward…

The European Central Bank has sharpened its public defence of the digital euro, presenting it as free digital cash, a privacy-preserving payment option, and a strategic response to Europe’s dependence on non-European payment infrastructure. In two interviews published on 26 January, ECB Executive Board members Piero Cipollone and Isabel Schnabel addressed growing political scepticism and misinformation surrounding the project. Speaking to Süddeutsche Zeitung, Cipollone framed the digital euro as a missing form of public money for the digital age. Cash, he argued, no longer covers a growing share of everyday payments, with around one third of transactions now taking place…

The European Central Bank used the published account of its 17–18 December 2025 monetary policy meeting to underline two messages at once: interest rates are likely to stay on hold for some time, and Europe’s legislators should move faster on the regulation that would establish a digital euro. The minutes, released on 22 January 2026, show policymakers judged inflation to be “in a good place”, with the economy proving more resilient than previously expected. Against that backdrop, the Governing Council backed keeping all three key ECB rates unchanged and stressed it would remain data-dependent and “meeting-by-meeting”, without pre-committing to a…

Ripple’s recent activity in Europe offers a clear signal of where parts of the crypto industry believe the market is heading. Through regulatory licensing, public positioning on stablecoins, and forward-looking market forecasts, the company is making a case that digital assets’ next phase will be defined less by disruption and more by integration with the existing financial system. That shift matters for Europe. As the European Central Bank advances work on a digital euro, and lawmakers implement the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, the boundary between public money, bank money, and regulated private digital money is becoming a central policy…

The European Central Bank is sharpening its message to commercial banks: in a fully digital economy, issuing traditional account money will no longer be enough. According to Fabio Panetta, commercial bank money will need to become fully digital and tokenised, evolving alongside a future digital euro to remain relevant and to anchor Europe’s monetary system. Speaking in Milan to Italy’s banking association, Panetta argued that both central bank money and private bank money will continue to form the backbone of the financial system, but only if they adapt to a world where assets and payments increasingly exist in digital, token-based…