Keynote speech by Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the conference “The future of payments: CBDC, digital assets and digital capital markets”, hosted by Bocconi University, the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the European Central Bank

Milan, 26 September 2025

In this age of accelerated change, digitalisation is redrawing the map of finance and payments. It’s imperative to make sure this transformation translates into genuine innovations that improve people’s lives and the efficiency of our economies, while preserving financial stability. In that respect, dialogue between research and policy is not just a nice to have – it is a necessity.

Today, I want to pay tribute to the large body of research that we rely on in our quest to answer the enduring question for central banks: how can we adapt our money in the face of change, while preserving the smooth functioning of payment systems, the effectiveness of monetary policy, and financial…