Banque de France
The Banque de France is the central bank of France and the French member of the Eurosystem, with its head office in Paris. It was founded on 18 January 1800 at the instigation of Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, and has set monetary policy independently since a law of 4 August 1993. Together with the ECB and the other euro area central banks it steers monetary policy toward an inflation target of 2 percent.
The Banque de France also oversees banks and insurers through the ACPR, watches over payment systems and market infrastructures and prints euro banknotes. It keeps the accounts of the French state, processes close to 9 million payments a year on its behalf and holds the gold reserves of France, the fifth largest in the world. Companies in France use its company ratings and, in difficult times, its credit mediation.
Monetary policy and the Eurosystem
The governor of the Banque de France sits on the Governing Council of the ECB, which sets the key interest rates for the euro area. The Banque de France became a member of the European System of Central Banks in 1998, is one of the main shareholders of the ECB and joined the Eurosystem with the launch of the euro on 1 January 1999.
In France the Banque de France works with the High Council for Financial Stability on risks to the financial system, including risks from climate change. It oversees financial market infrastructures together with the ACPR and the AMF and supervises cashless means of payment from cards to electronic money.
Wholesale CBDC and tokenized settlement
A wholesale central bank digital currency is central bank money in digital form that only central banks, commercial banks and other financial institutions use to settle trades in tokenized assets. The Banque de France started an experimentation program for wholesale CBDC in 2020, as one of the first central banks to do so, with banks, central banks, fintechs and technology providers as partners. It published reports on the experiments in November 2021 and July 2023 and ran two projects with the BIS, among them Jura, on cross-border settlement with several CBDCs.
For the exploratory work of the Eurosystem on settlement in central bank money in 2024, the Banque de France contributed its Full-DLT Interoperability solution. In it, central bank money circulates as Exploratory Cash Tokens on the DLT platform DL3S, and transactions with tokenized securities on a market DLT trigger the payments.
Digital euro
On 29 October 2025 the Governing Council of the ECB opened a new phase of the digital euro project to prepare technically for a possible launch, with a pilot in 2027 and a gradual launch from 2029 if the legislation passes. The Banque de France points to the decline of cash, which was used in 42 percent of in-store payments in France in 2024 against 68 percent in 2016. International card schemes handled 69 percent of card payments in the euro area in the second half of 2024.
The digital euro would be issued by the euro area central banks and distributed by banks and licensed fintechs, which would manage the accounts and customer relations. An offline function would give payments a level of privacy close to cash.
Upcoming fintech and finance events in France
Governor and deputy governors
Emmanuel Moulin has been governor of the Banque de France since 2 June 2026, after he was director general of the French Treasury and then secretary general of the French presidency. The Council of Ministers appoints the governor and the two deputy governors by decree for six years, renewable once, and Denis Beau has been first deputy governor since January 2024. The governor chairs the General Council of the Banque de France, while an Executive Committee runs the operations of the bank.
ACPR and banking supervision
The Banque de France oversees banks and insurers in France through the ACPR, the Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority, which the governor also chairs. The ACPR is part of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, which the European Council adopted in October 2013 as the first pillar of the banking union and which joins the ECB with the national supervisors of the euro area.
Le Lab and innovation
Le Lab, created in 2017 and scaled up in 2022, steers the innovation work of the Banque de France from premises in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. Its priority technologies are AI, blockchain, quantum technology, post-quantum cryptography and digital identity, which it tests in concrete use cases with project teams across the bank.
The Banque de France hosts the Paris branch of the BIS Innovation Hub Eurosystem Centre, whose other branch is in Frankfurt, and signed an innovation agreement with the Banca d'Italia in autumn 2023. Students, start-ups and researchers can answer calls for projects on topics such as generative AI, digital identity and deepfakes.
History since 1800
A group of bankers founded the Banque de France in 1800 as a private company with the task of issuing notes payable to bearer. It received the privilege of issue for Paris in 1803 and the monopoly for all of France in 1848, when the departmental banks became its branches. The act of 2 December 1945 nationalized the bank, and the law of 1993 gave it independence in monetary policy before the euro arrived.
Head office in Paris
The head office of the Banque de France is at 1 rue de La Vrillière in 75001 Paris, in the 1st arrondissement, and its share capital is one billion euros. Le Lab works from separate premises in the 2nd arrondissement of the city.
Banque de France and Finance Loop
Banks in Germany follow the same Eurosystem work on wholesale CBDC and the digital euro through the Deutsche Bundesbank, the German counterpart of the Banque de France. Finance Loop members discuss tokenized settlement, central bank money and the digital euro at its events on payments and digital money.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.