ECB’s Cipollone: Should Use Technology to Keep Central Bank Money Attractive

9 May 2024

By Isabel Teles – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone on Thursday said that central banks needed to keep up with technology and guarantee that central bank money always be seen as suitable for settlements.

Speaking at a seminar on tokenisation of finance in Rome, Cipollone said, according to slides posted on the website of the ECB, ‘Central banks must stay at the forefront of technology’, which would be done by ‘[e]nsuring that central bank money remains an attractive means of settlement.’

For wholesale financial transactions, the solution for settling transactions would be recorded in blockchain distributed ledger technology (DLT), he said.

‘A financial market infrastructure should conduct its money settlements in central bank money where practical and available’, he said.

From 13 May, the Eurosystem would start exploratory work to test new interoperability solutions for settling transactions, he said.