The European Central Bank and France’s central bank are supposed to be on the same team. Right now, they’re reading from very different playbooks on the future of digital money in Europe.
Denis Beau, deputy governor of the Banque de France, is pushing hard for the rapid development of euro-denominated tokenized money and stablecoins, built in partnership with the private sector. ECB President Christine Lagarde, meanwhile, would rather keep the spotlight on the central bank’s own digital euro project, treating private stablecoins as a secondary concern at best.
Two visions, one currency
Beau’s argument is straightforward: Europe can’t afford to wait. He’s calling for collaboration between private and public institutions to build pan-European tokenized payment infrastructure, and he wants regulatory frameworks under MiCA adapted to make that happen faster.
The Banque de France’s wholesale tokenized money service is set to launch by the end of 2025, a full 18 months ahead of the ECB’s digital euro pilot timeline.
On the private sector side, the Qivalis consortium, a group of 12 major banks including ING and BNP Paribas, plans to launch a private digital euro in 2025. That initiative aligns neatly with Beau’s vision of European banks building tokenized solutions rather than waiting for a government-issued alternative.
Lagarde’s position is more guarded. She views private euro stablecoins as less desirable than a central bank digital currency, arguing that the ECB’s own digital euro should be the priority. The ECB’s project has progressed to its provider selection phase as of October 2025, with pilots scheduled for mid-2027.
Why the disagreement matters
Dollar-denominated stablecoins, primarily USDT and USDC, dominate the global stablecoin market. Europe has essentially zero market share. Every month that passes without a credible euro-denominated digital alternative is a month where dollar stablecoins cement themselves further into global crypto and payment rails.
Beau’s push for private tokenized money isn’t just about innovation for innovation’s sake. It’s about European payment autonomy, the idea that the continent shouldn’t depend on US-based stablecoin issuers or American payment networks for its digital transaction infrastructure.
The gap between the two timelines is striking. The Banque de France’s wholesale service launching in 2025 versus the ECB’s digital euro pilots in mid-2027 isn’t a minor scheduling difference. It’s a philosophical chasm about whether speed or control matters more.
The private sector isn’t waiting
When 12 major financial institutions band together to build a private digital euro, they’re signaling that they don’t want to wait for the ECB’s timeline either.
Beau’s call for further regulatory adaptations suggests that even MiCA, in its current form, doesn’t go far enough to enable the tokenized payment infrastructure he envisions.
The Banque de France has historically been one of the more progressive European central banks on digital assets, running tokenization experiments well before many of its peers.