ECB Selects 36 Partners to Test Digital Euro Infrastructure

The European Central Bank has taken another operational step toward a potential digital euro by selecting the financial institutions that will help test the project's payment infrastructure.

Summary:

The pilot brings commercial banks and payment companies into the project’s first large-scale operational testing phase.
Participants will evaluate payment processing, merchant acceptance and technical performance before any public rollout.
The digital euro cannot be issued until EU lawmakers complete negotiations on its legal framework.

ECB Selects 36 Firms for Digital Euro Pilot

The European Central Bank (ECB) has selected 36 payment service providers (PSPs) to participate in the next phase of its digital euro project, marking the transition from design work toward operational testing.

Chosen from more than 50 applicants, the group includes traditional financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank and UniCredit, alongside payment companies and fintech firms including Stripe, Revolut, Adyen and SumUp.

The ECB said the participants will help evaluate how a digital euro would function within Europe’s existing payments ecosystem before any decision is made on issuing the currency.

How the Pilot Will Work

The pilot is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027 and will run for 12 months across the ECB and 19 national central banks within the euro area.

Participating firms will perform two distinct functions.

Some providers will act as distributing PSPs, giving Eurosystem staff access to beta digital euro wallets and payment services for testing. Others will serve as acquiring PSPs, onboarding merchants so digital euro payments can be accepted in simulated commercial environments.

The currency used during the program will be a beta version of the digital euro. It will not be available to the public, will not have legal tender status and cannot be used outside the controlled testing environment.

The objective is to evaluate payment processing, operational resilience, user experience and merchant integration before any wider rollout is considered.

Strategic Motivations: Why Banks are Joining the Pilot

While the ECB’s goal is to modernize the European payments landscape, the participation of these 36 firms reveals a complex game of institutional positioning. The move is as much about protecting market relevance as it is about technical testing.

Securing a “Seat at the Table”: Several participants – including major incumbents like Deutsche Bank and Groupe BPCE -have previously expressed concerns that a digital euro could threaten commercial bank deposits. By joining the pilot, these legacy institutions are moving from critics to collaborators, ensuring they can influence design choices and protect their existing business models from the inside.
Balancing Scale and Agility: The ECB deliberately curated a mix of “heavyweight” traditional banks and “nimble” fintechs like Revolut and Stripe. This allows the Eurosystem to test how the digital euro integrates with legacy institutional infrastructure while simultaneously ensuring it meets the modern, app-based expectations set by current digital payment challengers.
The “Cost-of-Admission” Filter: Because participants must bear their own build and certification costs without receiving ECB funding or charging user fees, the pilot naturally gravitated toward larger, well-capitalized firms. For these companies, the project is a long-term strategic hedge against the potential displacement of private payment networks by a public digital alternative.

Legislation Remains the Next Major Milestone

The technical pilot is moving forward alongside legislative negotiations in Brussels.

Earlier this month, the European Parliament approved the Single Currency Package, providing another step toward the legal framework required for the project.

The proposal will now enter trilogue negotiations between the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. The ECB has repeatedly stated that it will not decide whether to issue a digital euro until lawmakers complete that legislative process.

As a result, the pilot should be viewed as operational preparation rather than confirmation that a digital euro will be launched.

A Broader Push to Strengthen European Payments

The project forms part of the ECB’s broader strategy to strengthen Europe’s payment infrastructure.

One of the central objectives is reducing dependence on non-European payment networks by creating a public digital payment option that can operate alongside existing private providers.

At the same time, the ECB has consistently emphasized that the digital euro is intended to complement – not replace – physical cash.

Proposed legislation accompanying the project also reinforces the legal status of euro banknotes and coins, reflecting the central bank’s position that both forms of money should coexist.

By involving banks, fintech companies and merchant payment providers at an early stage, the bank is also testing whether the digital euro can integrate into existing financial infrastructure without requiring businesses or consumers to fundamentally change how they make or receive payments.

Focus Shifts From Design to Implementation

The selection of pilot participants marks one of the project’s most concrete milestones since development began.

Earlier phases concentrated on technical architecture and policy design. The next stage moves the discussion toward practical questions such as payment processing, merchant onboarding, interoperability and operational performance under real-world conditions.

Although significant legislative and political hurdles remain before any launch decision, the pilot demonstrates that European authorities are increasingly preparing the infrastructure needed should the digital euro ultimately receive formal approval.

The information presented in this article is intended for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as financial, investment, or trading advice. Coinspress.com does not promote or advocate for any particular investment strategy, asset, or cryptocurrency project. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile and unpredictable – always perform your own research and seek guidance from a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.

Author

Alexander Stefanov

Reporter at CoinsPress

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.