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ECB official defends digital euro privacy as rights groups push for technical safeguards
Digital euro privacy protections would prevent the Eurosystem from linking users to specific payments, ECB's Piero Cipollone said. Rights groups push for independently verifiable technical controls.
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European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said the Eurosystem would be unable to link individual users with specific payments under the digital euro's proposed design, addressing fears that a central bank digital currency could expand government surveillance.
Cipollone's comments came in an interview published Aug. 24. He said the digital euro would provide stronger privacy than conventional bank transfers because the Eurosystem would not receive information allowing it to identify individual users.
"The digital euro guarantees the maximum level of privacy that current technology can offer," Cipollone said.
Online transactions would be processed through banks and other payment service providers, which could identify customers when performing anti-money laundering checks. The Eurosystem would receive pseudonymized settlement information and would not directly connect that data with a particular person, according to the ECB's updated guidance. Those protections do not make online digital euro transactions anonymous to the customer's bank.
The digital euro would run on a centralized settlement platform, not a public blockchain. The Eurosystem would process and verify holdings and settlements while payment providers handled customer-facing accounts.
Offline payments would take place directly between devices such as smartphones or payment cards. The ECB says personal transaction details would remain known only to the payer and recipient. Anti-money laundering controls would apply when users added or withdrew money from an offline wallet, a process the ECB compares with checks performed when customers deposit or withdraw physical cash.
Offline functionality would also allow payments during network disruptions. Users would need to fund their offline balance beforehand, limiting available spending to the value stored locally on their device.