ECB selects 36 payment companies for the digital euro pilot program.

      Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, Revolut, Stripe, and Adyen are among the organizations included in the list. The 12-month trial is set to commence in the latter half of 2027, and the funds transferred during this period will not be considered legal tender.

      On Tuesday, the European Central Bank (ECB) released the list of 36 payment service providers selected from over 50 applicants to participate in the inaugural pilot of the digital euro.

      The chosen participants range from Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, and Poste Italiane to Revolut, Stripe, Adyen, SumUp, Satispay, Worldline, and the Cooperative Bank of Chania, a Greek cooperative lender now involved in the Eurosystem trial alongside some of the largest banks in the eurozone.

      These 36 entities represent 16 of the 21 member states in the euro area, with Italy contributing seven and Germany five. According to the ECB, this group encompasses "a wide array of business models and sizes," indicating that the pilot intentionally incorporates both established banks and newer app-based challengers that have captured much of the growth in European payments over the last decade.

      The pilot is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027 and will run for 12 months. It will utilize a beta version of the digital euro that is functionally and technically aligned with draft legislation but lacks legal tender status, meaning there is no obligation for acceptance, and no consumers outside the trial will interact with it.

      The mechanics of the trial categorize the 36 into two roles: distributing providers will offer Eurosystem staff beta digital euro accounts and facilitate payments from them, while acquiring providers will enroll merchants to accept such payments. Some firms may perform both functions, and the ECB highlights that a provider might provide services in a different country than where they applied.

      Testing will occur at the ECB and 19 national central banks, spanning from Estonia to Portugal, with Bulgaria and Malta being the two euro-area absentees. Central bank personnel will serve as users, and merchants will include e-commerce sellers and businesses that operate in institutional settings, such as cafeterias and restaurants.

      Four primary use cases will be prioritized: online person-to-person payments, offline person-to-person payments via NFC, tap-to-pay at points of sale, and online and mobile commerce.

      Participation is not free; providers will incur their own costs, will not receive funding from the ECB, and cannot charge pilot users any fees. This structure has been recognized by industry media as likely favoring larger entities, as they are better equipped to manage the associated development and certification costs without a revenue stream. The ECB had previously estimated that approximately 10 to 30 providers would be selected but ended up with 36.

      Piero Cipollone, an ECB executive board member and chair of the high-level task force on the project, stated, "The strong market interest in the pilot shows the private sector’s readiness to engage actively and quickly advance with the digital euro project to strengthen the European payments landscape." A day before the announcement, he emphasized in an interview with Jornal de Negócios that actions speak louder than words, noting that over 50 institutions had applied.

      The project's strategic objective remains unchanged: the ECB aims to decrease the eurozone's reliance on US-based card networks and payment platforms, a dependence that recent consolidation efforts, including Mastercard’s $1.8 billion acquisition of a stablecoin firm, have not alleviated.

      This principle of sovereignty is also evident in the EU’s universal digital wallet initiatives. The ECB has spent much of the last two years addressing concerns related to the currency's design, particularly regarding privacy and data.

      The timeline for the project now depends on developments in Brussels rather than Frankfurt. The ECB hopes to be ready for a potential first issuance in 2029, contingent on the adoption of the digital euro Regulation this year. The determination of which countries each provider will actually serve during the pilot will be released later this year.