The European Central Bank has tapped 36 payment firms — including Deutsche Bank, Revolut Bank, Stripe and UniCredit — to take part in a year-long digital euro pilot, underscoring Europe’s push to build a central bank digital currency (CBDC) ahead of a possible launch by 2029.
What’s happening
- The ECB announced on July 14 that the pilot will begin in the second half of 2027 and run for 12 months. It will bring together the ECB, 19 national central banks and private-sector providers to test a beta version of the digital euro that will not have legal-tender status.
- The objective is to assess technical performance, operational processes and user experience. Some participating firms will let users open experimental digital euro accounts and make payments; others will trial complementary services rather than customer-facing features.
- Staff from national central banks will run person-to-person and person-to-business transactions across physical retail outlets (including POS systems), e-commerce platforms and mobile-payment channels.
Why it matters
- ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said the strong private-sector turnout shows firms are ready to contribute to developing Europe’s payments infrastructure.
- The pilot is explicitly preparatory — not a decision to issue a CBDC. Any eventual rollout still depends on the completion of EU legislation. The European Parliament has already voted in favor of digital euro rules, allowing technical testing and legal work to proceed in parallel.
- Policymakers say a digital euro could reduce reliance on existing payment rails like Visa, Mastercard and Apple Pay. However, critics warn of risks to financial privacy and concerns over transaction monitoring.
Broader context
- The digital euro program is advancing alongside the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regime; under MiCA several crypto firms including Ripple, OKX and Coinbase have already won regulatory approval to operate in the bloc.
- By contrast, the United States remains divided. Crypto.news reported that President Donald Trump declined to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — which included a provision blocking the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC through 2031 — because the Senate had not passed the Save America Act. Trump has cited that same reason for delaying his signature previously, according to a Truth Social post cited by crypto.news.
Bottom line
Europe is visibly accelerating CBDC preparations with an ambitious pilot program and parallel legislative work, while the U.S. continues to debate whether and how a Fed-backed digital currency should proceed.
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