Digital euro goes full sovereignty mode, US cloud giants not on guest list

Central bank turns to homegrown providers to underpin virtual cash push

Europe is taking a small step toward breaking its reliance on US Big Tech by hiring only cloud operators headquartered in the EU to work on the backbone of the digital euro project.

French businesses OVHcloud and Scaleway are providing a sovereign European cloud infrastructure to support the digital currency, a European Central Bank scheme to enable electronic payments in shops, online, and person-to-person.

The project’s driving motivation is independence from American-owned payment networks. European payments are dominated by US companies like Visa and Mastercard, according to Finance Watch, which says that more than two-thirds of card transactions in the euro area were settled through international payment schemes in the second half of 2023.