Digital euro fees will be capped, so start benchmarking your debit-card revenue now

The digital euro's compensation model has three parts. Issuing and acquiring banks would pay no scheme or processing fees to the Eurosystem. The merchant service charge would be capped. The inter-PSP fee, which the merchant's PSP pays the consumer's PSP, would also be capped. None of this is law yet. The regulation is still being negotiated in trilogue, and the Council and Parliament positions differ on the details.

Under the Council's position, the caps would be set for a transitional period of at least five years. They would be based on the average fees for debit cards that work both at the point of sale and online. The ECB would calculate the caps from the fee data PSPs report. A lower national cap would apply where a member state's own average is much lower. Parliament wants to add a "no worse off" rule on top. Under it, a merchant would never pay more for the digital euro than its lowest fee for a comparable payment method today.

What to do now: map your current debit-card fees by merchant segment and channel, and get your fee-data reporting into shape. Your future digital euro revenue will be set by those benchmarks, and possibly by each merchant's own lowest current price. Then model two cases: euro-area cap only, and cap plus "no worse off". Use the results to set your trilogue advocacy and your co-badging plans with domestic schemes.

ECB, Cipollone, "Digital euro: Where we stand and what lies ahead", 18 Feb 2026