ECB Executive Board Member Piero Cipollone laid out the case for both tracks in a speech at the House of the Euro in Brussels on September 14, 2026. The address framed physical cash and a potential digital euro not as rivals but as complementary instruments, both classified as "public money" (currency issued by central banks and free from commercial intermediation) sitting outside the commercial payment infrastructure that currently dominates European transactions.

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Cash Is Growing, But Losing Ground at Checkouts

The numbers around euro cash tell two stories at once. On the supply side, over 31 billion banknotes worth €1.6 trillion are in circulation, growing at roughly 3 percent a year, alongside more than 150 billion coins. On the demand side, cash's share of daily transactions in the eurozone has dropped sharply: from 68 percent of purchases by count in 2019 to 40 percent by 2025, and from 40 percent to 24 percent by value between 2019 and 2024.

Business acceptance has stabilized, at least for now. The ECB's 2026 Use-of-Cash Survey found 92 percent of euro area companies with physical locations accept cash, up from 90 percent in 2024. Greece and Italy sit at 99 percent acceptance; Cyprus is the lowest at 76 percent. Companies in the survey rated cash superior to digital payments on privacy and reliability, and no digital payment category ranked strictly better than cash across all measured dimensions in the survey.

Still, 25 percent of euro area firms have already put active strategies in place to encourage cashless payments, and mobile payment acceptance nearly doubled from 36 percent to 68 percent between 2024 and 2026.

Cipollone's argument for protecting cash access rests partly on sovereignty. Two-thirds of euro area card transactions run on infrastructure governed by non-European companies. Average net merchant service charges in the EU nearly doubled between 2018 and 2022, according to Cipollone's April 2026 speech, despite regulatory caps designed to limit fees.

Cash legal tender protections carry particular weight for eurozone diaspora workers, many of whom remain outside traditional banking infrastructure and rely on euro-denominated cash for everyday financial life. That connection runs directly through the legislation Cipollone was describing.

"People in the euro area should be able to pay with cash whenever they choose," Cipollone said, describing the intent behind the Single Currency Package now in trilogue negotiations between the European Parliament and EU Council. The package contains two parallel regulations: one establishing legal tender protections for cash and one providing the legislative framework for the digital euro, which is why a single bill covers both physical and digital money.

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New Banknotes, Chosen by the Public

The banknote redesign is the first complete overhaul since euro notes entered circulation in 2002. The process has been structured around public participation: a 2023 design theme survey drew 365,000 participants and produced two shortlisted concepts. One theme, "European Culture," features historical figures including Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Maria Callas. The other, "Rivers and Birds," highlights native European species alongside EU institutions.

An expert jury reviewed more than 1,200 applications from graphic designers across the EU and selected 10 finalists, which were unveiled on July 23, 2026. A public vote opened the same day and runs through September 21, 2026, just one week from the date of this article. More than nine million responses have already been recorded.

"The redesign of the euro banknotes is part of a long-term effort by the Eurosystem to ensure that cash remains a secure, efficient and relatable means of payment," Cipollone said at the July launch.

ECB President Christine Lagarde placed the project in a broader context at the same event. "Euro banknotes are more than a means of payment," Lagarde said. "They are one of the most tangible expressions of Europe."

The ECB Governing Council is expected to make a final design selection by the end of 2026, with new notes phased into circulation gradually over the following decade.

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The Digital Euro: Timeline, Cost, and Limits

The ECB completed its digital euro preparation phase in October 2025. Launched in 2023, the two-year phase produced a closing report that set out concrete figures for the first time.

Development costs through initial issuance are estimated at approximately €1.3 billion, with annual operating costs afterward running around €320 million.

The ECB has signed framework agreements with five external component providers and selected six national central banks to build core clearing, settlement, and issuance infrastructure. A scheme rulebook incorporating approximately 2,000 stakeholder comments was also finalised during this phase, reflecting extensive industry consultation.

An individual holding limit of up to €3,000 is considered safe from a financial stability standpoint. A pilot could begin as early as mid-2027, with full issuance targeted for 2029, contingent on the Single Currency Package becoming law. Surveys cited in the closing report found 66 percent of EU citizens willing to try the digital euro. The design includes offline payment capability, allowing transactions between devices without an internet connection. That feature preserves transaction privacy and maintains resilience during connectivity outages.

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A Gap the ECB Has Not Addressed

The reporting above draws on Cipollone's September 14 speech and the ECB's published research. What follows examines what that speech and the broader digital euro framework have not yet answered.

For the tens of millions of South Asian and African diaspora workers living across the eurozone, the ECB's framing raises an unresolved question. Africa received roughly $124 billion in remittances in 2025, approximately double overseas development aid flows, according to World Bank data cited by the Institute for Security Studies. Large portions of those flows originate from diaspora communities in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands.

South Asia accounts for 26 percent of all global remittances, with India alone representing 15 percent of the global total.

Sending money to Africa remains the world's most expensive remittance corridor, with costs averaging 8.2 percent of transfer value as of the first quarter of 2025.

Diaspora fintech platforms including LemFi, Nala, and Sendwave have compressed fees to 1 to 3 percent by bypassing correspondent banking. LemFi crossed $1 billion in monthly transaction volume by January 2025.

The digital euro as currently designed applies within the eurozone only. It requires a eurozone bank account or wallet for access and has no stated mechanism for cross-border use to non-EU jurisdictions. The communities most exposed to high-cost euro-denominated payment flows, those sending money to Lagos, Nairobi, Dhaka, Colombo, or Kathmandu, fall entirely outside its initial scope.

Africa's own Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), launched in 2022, had connected 17 countries and more than 150 commercial banks by mid-2025, representing a parallel public-money sovereignty project. At the global level, the BIS mBridge framework has been explored as a potential pathway for cross-border central bank digital currency interoperability, but no roadmap for connecting PAPSS or similar systems with the digital euro has been published.

The legislative vote on the Single Currency Package, currently in trilogue, will determine whether the ECB's dual-track approach becomes binding law across 21 countries. Until policymakers extend that framework to cover cross-border architecture, the communities with the most to gain from cheaper and more resilient euro-denominated payment corridors will remain outside the system being built in their name.