Beau urges private tokenized euro for 2025 launch

Denis Beau, deputy governor of the Banque de France, urged a private-sector tokenized euro to be launched in 2025 and asked regulators and firms to work together on pan‑European tokenized payment infrastructure.

Beau requested changes to the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) rules to speed deployment. The Banque de France plans to offer a wholesale tokenized money service by the end of 2025. Separately, a private consortium of 12 banks called Qivalis, including ING and BNP Paribas, has plans for a private digital-euro product in 2025.

The European Central Bank’s digital-euro project is on a different schedule. The ECB reached a provider selection stage in October 2025 and has scheduled pilots of a central-bank digital currency for mid-2027. ECB President Christine Lagarde has emphasized that a central-bank digital currency should be the priority and has described private stablecoins as secondary.

Beau argued that euro-denominated tokenized money should arrive faster because dollar-denominated stablecoins, mainly USDT and USDC, dominate global markets. He framed his proposal as a way to increase Europe’s payment options and reduce reliance on non‑European stablecoin issuers and payment rails.

Tokenized money are digital representations of fiat currency recorded on distributed ledgers or similar technology. Stablecoins are tokens designed to keep a stable value relative to a currency and are often backed by reserves. A central-bank digital currency, or CBDC, is a digital form of a currency issued directly by a central bank. Wholesale tokenized money targets interbank and large-value transactions; retail solutions would support everyday consumer payments.

The Banque de France has run tokenization experiments in recent years. Observers within regulators and market participants have noted that operating tokenized instruments at scale would require more detailed rules under MiCA to address cross-border use, issuer responsibilities and infrastructure standards.

European authorities and financial institutions now face parallel timelines: industry-led tokenized euro initiatives and a central-bank digital-euro pilot. The differing schedules present questions about regulatory adjustments, technical integration and who would operate euro-denominated tokenized payment services.