The European Central Bank selected 36 banks, fintechs and payment processors on July 14 to help test a beta digital euro in real-world payment environments beginning in the second half of 2027.
The participants include Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, Revolut, Stripe, Adyen, Worldline, Nexi Payments and SumUp. They will connect their payment services to the Eurosystem’s infrastructure and support transactions between central-bank staff and selected merchants during a pilot scheduled to run for 12 months.
TL;DR
- The ECB selected 36 payment service providers from 16 euro-area countries after receiving more than 50 applications.
- The pilot will test online and offline person-to-person payments, physical-store purchases and e-commerce transactions.
- The beta digital euro will not have legal-tender status and does not represent a final decision to issue the currency.
- A possible 2029 launch remains dependent on EU legislation and subsequent approval by the ECB Governing Council.
Payment Firms Move From Consultation to Integration
The selection moves the digital euro project beyond design discussions and into a multi-year technical integration process. According to the ECB’s July 14 announcementmore than 50 payment service providers applied after the central bank opened its call for expressions of interest in March 2026.
The 36 successful applicants cover 16 of the euro area’s 21 member states and include both traditional lenders and non-bank payment companies. The official participant list includes Deutsche Bank, DZ Bank, UniCredit, BPCE, National Bank of Greece, Caixa Geral de Depósitos and Bank of Cyprus alongside Revolut, Stripe, Adyen, Worldline, Satispay, SumUp and Nexi Payments.
The diversity is operationally important. A digital euro would not be distributed through a single ECB-controlled consumer platform. Banks and payment companies would provide the accounts, applications, customer support and merchant connections through which people interact with the central-bank money.
“The strong market interest in the pilot shows the private sector’s readiness to engage actively and quickly advance with the digital euro project,” ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said.
Technical development is expected to begin in the third quarter of 2026. The providers must connect to the Digital Euro Service Platform, develop the required payment functions, complete certification and onboard eligible users before the operational trial starts in the second half of 2027.
Providers Will Test Both Sides of a Payment
The ECB separates the participating companies into distributing and acquiring payment service providers. Some will perform both roles.
- Distributing providers will give eligible users access to beta digital euro services, including account setup, funding, payment initiation and transaction management.
- Acquiring providers will connect selected physical and online merchants so they can accept beta digital euro payments.
- Dual-role providers will test the complete transaction flow from the payer’s wallet to the merchant’s acceptance system.
The pilot will operate at the ECB and 19 participating national central banks. Central-bank employees will act as the individual users, while selected cafeterias, restaurants and e-commerce businesses will provide controlled merchant environments.
The transactions will cover four principal use cases: online person-to-person transfers, offline person-to-person transfers, online payments at physical points of sale and purchases through e-commerce or mobile-commerce platforms.
Offline person-to-person payments will use near-field communication, allowing two compatible devices to exchange value by being tapped together without either device connecting to the internet. Physical merchants will test online contactless payments using Software Point of Sale technology, which allows a standard smartphone or similar device to function as a payment terminal.
This structure allows the ECB to test more than whether the underlying ledger can process transfers. The trial will examine how users open and fund wallets, how providers authenticate customers, how merchants receive confirmation and how the entire system behaves when transactions fail or require refunds.
The Beta Euro Is Not a Public CBDC Launch
The pilot currency will be technically and functionally close to the digital euro described in the EU’s proposed legislation, but it will not have legal-tender status. Businesses outside the selected trial environment will not be required to accept it.
The ECB’s pilot guidance explains that the beta digital euro will represent a liability recorded on the Eurosystem’s books. For online use, it will be treated as scriptural money under the existing payment-services framework.
Users will not hold accounts directly with the ECB or a national central bank. They must instead hold or open a commercial-bank-money account with a participating provider for the duration of the trial.
The selected providers will remain responsible for their customer relationships and must comply with the existing Payment Services Directive, General Data Protection Regulation and EU anti-money-laundering rules.
Those restrictions make the exercise closer to a controlled operational test than a limited public rollout. Participation will be restricted to central-bank staff and selected merchants, allowing the Eurosystem to assess robustness, scalability and usability before exposing the infrastructure to a wider population.
Offline Payments Put Privacy and Resilience to the Test
Offline functionality is one of the pilot’s most consequential components because it is designed to preserve digital payments during internet or network disruptions.
The ECB’s broader design uses secure hardware inside compatible phones or other devices to store offline value and execute transfers locally. The payment is settled between the devices rather than waiting for a connection to the central infrastructure.
That model is intended to provide privacy closer to physical cash. Under the ECB’s proposed privacy frameworkthe details of an offline transaction would be known only to the payer and recipient.
Online payments would follow a different model. Customer identification and anti-money-laundering obligations would remain with the user’s payment provider, while the ECB and national central banks would process pseudonymous identifiers rather than directly identifiable customer information.
The trial should reveal whether those protections can operate alongside fraud controls, device security and reliable balance management. Offline transfers create additional technical risks because the system must prevent the same funds from being spent twice while devices remain disconnected.
Holding and transaction limits are expected to form part of the eventual design to reduce financial-stability and misuse risks, but final limits have not yet been established. The pilot should not be treated as confirmation of any specific cap.
A 2029 Launch Still Depends on Lawmakers
The ECB aims to be technically ready for a potential first issuance during 2029, assuming European lawmakers adopt the necessary digital euro regulation.
The European Commission’s proposed regulation would establish the legal framework for the currency, including distribution, privacy, legal-tender treatment and the ECB’s authority to impose holding limits.
The pilot does not bypass that process. The ECB has stated that it will decide whether to issue a digital euro only after the regulation has been adopted. The Governing Council could still delay, modify or reject issuance based on the legislation, technical findings and broader policy assessment.
Recent provider selection therefore confirms that the infrastructure work is advancing, not that Europe has made an irreversible decision to launch a central bank digital currency. The 2027 trial will test whether banks, fintechs, merchants and the Eurosystem can operate one payment system across different institutions, devices and national markets before the political decision is made.
