A senior official at the Bank of Italy said the European Union should explore a tokenized extension of its existing cashless payments system.
In a speech on Monday in Rome, Bank of Italy Deputy Governor Chiara Scotti said that tokenization has become more “relevant” and that the authorities should start thinking about a “complementary strategy.”
“[Attention] should turn not only to new instruments, but also to how Europe’s existing payment arrangements could evolve in that direction,” said Scotti.
“A tokenized extension of SEPA could become an important area for reflection, building on a distinctive European asset: a common payments framework with scale, shared standards and an established degree of interoperability,” Scotti said.
Such a framework could also help adapt the traditional logic of a two-tier monetary system to new technological environments, according to Scotti.
SEPA, or the Single Euro Payments Area, enables cashless euro payments across the EU and several non-EU countries. In the first half of 2025, the total value of non-cash payment transactions, including those via SEPA, reached 116 trillion euros ($135.7 trillion), up 2.9% year-on-year, according to data from the European Central Bank (ECB).
Digital euro
Scotti also pointed to the digital euro as the area “where analytical work is most advanced.”
“Its implications have been thoroughly examined across the dimensions relevant to public policy, such as monetary policy, financial stability, intermediation, payments efficiency, privacy, inclusion and the coexistence with private solutions,” said Scotti. “This is not yet the case for other instruments.”
While stablecoins and tokenized deposits may serve legitimate use cases, their broader implications for the monetary system are “less clear,” Scotti added.
The ECB and the Eurosystem continue to test the digital euro. Earlier this month, the ECB signed agreements with three standard‑setting organizations — European Card Payment Cooperation, Nexo Standards, and Berlin Group — to trial online payment processing for the digital euro.
© 2026 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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