The European Central Bank (ECB) is working on plans for the new digital euro – a comprehensive initiative to create a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that will act as a digital equivalent to physical cash, new spending limits are going to come into force next year.
The digital euro is structurally designed to guarantee European monetary sovereignty, enhance retail payment privacy, and prevent complete reliance on foreign, non-European card networks. However, in the meantime, the European Union will enforce a strict, uniform cash payment limit of €10,000 starting on July 10, 2027.
This historic rule, enacted under Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, is a major step in the EU’s revamped Anti-Money Laundering (AML) framework designed to harmonise laws and close cross-border financial loopholes.
And idealista is reporting that Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 introduces a Union-wide limit on large cash payments above €10,000. It is intended to reduce the risks associated with large sums changing hands anonymously.
Yahoo Finance reports that this covers a single cash payment above €10,000 or linked payments that together pass that amount. Payments over the limit would need to use an identifiable method instead, such as a bank transfer or card payment.
The €10,000 EU figure is a bloc-wide maximum, and countries can keep lower national limits. Spain’s Tax Agency states that transactions worth €1,000 or more cannot be paid in cash when one party acts as a business owner or professional.
The threshold is €10,000 when the payer is a private individual who can prove that they do not have their tax domicile in Spain and are not acting as a businessperson or professional. For individuals not resident in Spain, the maximum threshold is set at 10,000 euros, meaning that the change at EU level will not result in any long-term modification of current national controls.
The tightening of digital taxation is accompanied by additional due diligence obligations that alter the operations of various commercial sectors. Consequently, for amounts of 3,000 euros or more, companies are obliged to implement more rigorous identity checks, so that each financial transaction can be linked to a duly identified individual. All of this leads to greater scrutiny aimed at reducing the scope for anonymity.
Although there are higher regulatory thresholds for large sums of money, citizens retain the right to keep their household savings or carry out everyday transactions without legal restrictions, provided they can prove that these funds have been obtained legitimately.
In any case, banks remain obliged to monitor unusual deposits at cash machines, as well as to report to the relevant authorities any transaction exceeding 3,000 euros or involving the use of high-denomination banknotes. With the gradual digitisation of EU finances, it seems that physical cash will gradually be relegated to the background.