For nearly three decades, Ulrich Bindseil has served at the heart of European monetary policy. As Director General for Market Infrastructure and Payments at the European Central Bank, he has been a steady figure behind the evolution of the euro’s operational backbone—leading projects from TARGET services to the Eurosystem Collateral Management System. But in his final days at the ECB, Bindseil finds himself at the center of a different kind of transformation: the digitization of money itself. We talked about the digital euro project and more.
In a wide-ranging discussion on the BFRR podcast, Bindseil reflected on the digital euro, the rise of stablecoins, and the long-term architecture of European payments. His tone was measured but firm: the way people pay is changing, and the euro must adapt.
“We want to maintain some contestability of markets,” he said, referring to the dominance of Apple Pay, PayPal, and international card schemes. “We don’t want big tech companies to have enormous market power.” Instead, the ECB envisions a future where public money—digital, secure, and widely accepted—coexists with private solutions in a balanced ecosystem.
That vision is embodied in the digital euro project, which has moved from an investigation phase into a formal preparation stage. Yet the final decision to issue the currency remains pending. Legislation is not expected before 2026, and the ECB must navigate how much design work it can do in the absence of legal certainty.
Despite the ambiguity, Bindseil is clear on one point: “There must be a significant market share of digital euro,” he insisted. “A payment instrument that is never used is not usable if you need it.”
The ECB’s goal is not to replace private solutions, he emphasized, but to anchor the payments market in a public option that guarantees legal tender status, mandatory acceptance, and low merchant fees. “We recover costs, we deliver something useful, but we will not increase prices,” Bindseil said. “Merchants will be pretty happy about that.”
Still, the ECB’s approach has raised questions. Why not issue the digital euro directly on public blockchains? Why prohibit stablecoin issuers from holding central bank reserves, if doing so would enhance financial stability? And, critically, why has the ECB taken a cautious stance toward euro-denominated stablecoins—digital tokens backed by euros or eurozone government bonds?
Bindseil’s answers suggest both philosophical and operational concerns. He fears that allowing stablecoins access to central bank balance sheets would blur the line between public and private money, and fragment the monetary system. He also noted that the ECB, unlike countries such as Kazakhstan, is not currently considering issuing CBDC on public blockchains, though it closely observes such developments.
At the same time, he acknowledged the potential of stablecoins—especially euro-denominated ones—as long as they are properly regulated. “MICA [the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation] has endorsed the idea of e-money tokens,” Bindseil said. “Who are we, then, to say we don’t like them?”
He pointed to the growing momentum of U.S.-based dollar stablecoins, which are now being integrated by Visa, PayPal, and Stripe, as a challenge to Europe’s strategic autonomy. “We should ask ourselves why euro stablecoins are not more successful,” he said. “Have we done something wrong in our policies?”
Bindseil believes European regulators should encourage euro-based alternatives. The current climate of preemptive skepticism, he warned, risks fitting the worst clichés about European innovation: “Excited, regulate, and concerned—before anything has happened.”
The ECB is also pursuing wholesale innovations more aggressively. Through pilot projects with financial institutions, the bank is testing how central bank money might interact with distributed ledger technologies (DLT) for asset settlement. The long-term vision? A unified ledger that could one day integrate TARGET services with tokenized assets.
That future remains hypothetical. For now, the ECB is working on an interoperability layer to connect existing DLT platforms with central bank money—a more pragmatic starting point. “We have to experiment,” Bindseil said. “A lot of studying still needs to be done.”
As he prepares to leave the ECB, Bindseil’s commitment to public money in the digital age remains clear. His personal future is less so. “It’s time to move on,” he said, confirming that June 30 would be his final day after 28 years at the institution. “I remain passionate about payment topics and central bank issues.”
While Bindseil declined to name his next destination, he remains active on SSRN and LinkedIn, continuing to publish on topics ranging from CBDC design to the role of stablecoins in cross-border finance. Wherever he lands next, his thinking will continue to shape the evolving debate over the architecture of money in Europe and beyond.
Note that the episode was recorded on June 25, 2025. On this date, Ulrich was still in his role at the European Central Bank, which he left on June 30.
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