The ECB cannot see your digital euro, but your bank can

On 9 July 2026 the European Parliament voted 416 to 169. That allows Parliament to start negotiating with the member states on the digital euro. Nothing has been introduced yet. But the questions are now concrete: who sees your payments, how much can you hold and what happens to cash?

The short answer: the ECB cannot see you, your bank can. And your digital euros earn you not a cent of interest.

Parliament voted for negotiations, not for introduction

The vote was about a mandate. Parliament can now discuss the legal text with the Council of the European Union, where the governments sit. There were 22 abstentions. Three groups, PfE, ECR and ESN, had challenged the decision of the economic affairs committee of 23 June 2026. They lost.

What does that mean? The digital euro is digital money issued by the ECB itself, just like banknotes. The money in your current account is a claim on your bank. A stablecoin is a promise made by a company. The digital euro is neither of those.

You can read more about that last difference in our piece on stablecoins as 300 billion dollars of promises.

The ECB has its timetable ready. It assumes the law will be adopted in the course of 2026. A pilot could then start from mid 2027, and the first issuance might follow in 2029. The ECB will only take the decision to actually issue once the law exists. In July the first round of talks with the member states had yet to start. A law in 2026 is a tight schedule.

The ECB sees a code, your bank sees you

This is the heart of the privacy debate. Who sees what depends on how you pay.

For offline payments, the ECB says only you and the recipient know the details. That comes closest to cash.

For online payments, your bank passes the payment on with a code instead of your name. That means the ECB cannot directly link a payment to you. The report of Parliament's economic affairs committee says the ECB should "in no circumstance" get access to data that identifies you.

Watch out: A code without a name is not the same as anonymous. The link between that code and you does exist. It sits with your bank. According to the ECB, your bank gets the minimum data needed to comply with EU law, including the rules against money laundering and terrorist financing.

If your bank wants to use your data for something commercial, such as advertising, it needs your explicit consent. That is what the ECB says. What the law will finally allow has not been settled. That is exactly what the negotiations are about.

You can only hold a limited amount, and it earns no interest

There will be a cap on how many digital euros one person can hold. The aim, according to the ECB: to stop people from pulling their money out of banks on a large scale. That could put banks in trouble.

Nobody knows yet how high the cap will be. At the request of lawmakers, the ECB tested limits of 500 to 3,000 euros per person. It stresses that this is not its view on the right amount. On 19 September 2025, the finance ministers of the euro area agreed how the limit will be set. Parliament's economic affairs committee wants the European Commission to set the amount on the advice of the ECB, and to review it at least every two years.

In numbers: Say you have 10,000 euros in savings and the cap is set at 3,000 euros, the highest amount tested. Then you can hold at most 3,000 euros in digital euros. Those 3,000 euros earn you nothing, because digital euros pay no interest. If the cap is 500 euros, that is your maximum. Want to pay 8,000 euros for a used car? That still works: link your wallet to your bank account and the amount above your balance comes from that account.

So the cap limits what you keep, not what you spend. For the banks, that is exactly the point. For you, it means the digital euro becomes a wallet and not a piggy bank.

Programmable money is ruled out, conditional payments are not

One fear comes up again and again: that the government could decide what you spend your money on. The ECB is clear about this. The digital euro "would never become programmable money", it writes on its own site. Programmable money is money with a fixed purpose or an expiry date, like a gift voucher.

At the same time, the ECB did test conditional payments in 2025. Money is reserved and only paid once a condition is met. The ECB's example: the train arrives. If it does not, the money goes back to the payer.

Example: You book a train trip for 80 euros. The amount is reserved in your digital euro wallet. When the train arrives, the operator gets the money. If the trip is cancelled, the 80 euros are free again in your own wallet.

The difference matters. With a conditional payment, the condition is attached to one payment. With programmable money, it is attached to the money itself. So the technology for conditions already exists. What draws the line is the legal text, and that is not finished.

Cash is losing ground, even without a digital euro

The ECB's SPACE study from 2022 shows how fast it is going. In 2016, 79 percent of payments in shops in the euro area were made in cash. In 2019 it was 72 percent, and in 2022 only 59 percent. Measured by value, it was 42 percent in 2022.

The Netherlands leads the way. There, 67 percent of shop payments were made by card and 10 percent by phone, the highest share of mobile payments in the euro area. Still, 60 percent of people in the euro area found the option to pay in cash important.

Parliament wants to protect cash. Member states must keep cash accessible. Shops may not ban cash, and countries must regularly check whether people can still get cash, with attention to vulnerable groups. A separate law on banknotes and coins as legal tender goes into the negotiations at the same time.

The other way round, most businesses will have to accept the digital euro. The self employed and small businesses that do not accept other digital payments either are exempt.

Free for you, not for the system

Opening, holding and managing digital euros should be free. Paying offline costs nothing either. But free here means: not per payment. The bill lands somewhere else.

• The ECB estimates the cost of building it up to the first issuance at about 1.3 billion euros.
• After that the system costs about 320 million euros a year, from 2029.
• The Eurosystem pays for this from the income it earns by issuing money, as with banknotes.
• According to the ECB, banks together need to invest 4 to 5.8 billion euros, spread over four years.

Shops do pay a fee, but it will be capped, according to the committee report. How high that cap will be is still unknown.

Your identity and your health data get their own digital systems

The digital euro does not stand alone. All EU countries must offer a digital identity by the end of 2026 to citizens and businesses who want one. From March 2029, patient records and electronic prescriptions will cross borders. From March 2031, medical images, lab results and hospital discharge reports will follow.

These are three separate laws with their own rules. There is no evidence that they form one system. With health data you can limit the access of care providers and opt out of use for research. With the digital euro, your privacy depends on what the negotiators write down now.

Tip: When you read news about the digital euro, always check who is speaking. The ECB describes its design. Parliament and the member states write the law. Only that law decides what will be allowed. It worked the same way with the European crypto rules, see MiCA in plain language.

Questions to ask

• What data does my bank get exactly, and how long does it keep it?
• Who sets the cap, and who may lower it later?
• Who investigates if a bank or the ECB uses too much data?
• How does cash stay usable when more and more shops only want digital payments?
• Can I pay without a smartphone?

This article is an explanation, not financial or legal advice.

Sources

• European Parliament, Digital euro: MEPs ready to start negotiations, 9 July 2026
• European Central Bank, Preparation phase of a digital euro, closing report, October 2025
• European Central Bank, Digital euro and privacy
• European Central Bank, How would a digital euro work?
• European Parliament, Legislative Observatory, summary of report 2023/0212(COD), 26 June 2026
• European Central Bank, Study on the payment attitudes of consumers in the euro area (SPACE), December 2022
• European Commission, European digital identity
• European Commission, European Health Data Space