ECB locks in open payment standards for digital euro

The European Central Bank has signed agreements with three European standards bodies — ECPC, nexo standards and the Berlin Group — to use existing open payment standards for the planned digital euro. The bank said the aim is to reduce adoption costs and speed rollout across the euro area.

The technical rules cover how the digital euro would work at the point of sale and inside merchant systems. CPACE, developed by ECPC, manages contactless near-field communication between a device and a terminal. Nexo standards connect merchant systems to payment service providers and acquirers and are already used for card acceptance and ATM transactions. The Berlin Group framework supports payments by alias, such as a phone number, balance checks, reconciliation across mobile devices and payments that begin inside a merchant app.

The ECB selected the standards with industry participants through its Rulebook Development Group. The bank said the set of standards fits the goals of the Eurosystem payments strategy and that additional standards could be added later if the ECB’s Governing Council approves them.

The ECB said using standards already in market use should lower integration costs for banks, merchants and vendors, make the user experience more consistent across countries and allow domestic payment schemes to expand into other euro-area markets without terminal upgrades.

Europe’s payments landscape currently lacks a single open standard that works on all terminals. Many acceptance systems rely on proprietary standards run by international card schemes and global digital wallets, which creates cost and dependency issues for European institutions and businesses.

Questions remain about project costs and transparency. Nicholas Anthony of the Cato Institute filed a public records request for digital euro spending details; he reported the ECB asked him for proof of EU citizenship and later replied: “Having examined your request, we concluded that, regrettably, at this juncture, it is not possible for the ECB to process it.” A later request from Maya Thomas of Big Brother Watch, submitted as an EU citizen, was also rejected after an extended deadline.

The ECB argued that publishing detailed spending figures could expose contractors’ commercial information, the bank’s internal finances, confidential data and personal information. Partial disclosures in ECB announcements have been used to produce spending estimates: one calculation put at least €1.12 billion already set aside with another €2.62 billion expected in the launch year, while a separate estimate suggested a total cost as high as €18 billion.

The agreements with ECPC, nexo standards and the Berlin Group are a technical measure intended to make digital euro acceptance interoperable from day one and to give market actors a clearer technical foundation ahead of any formal issuance and regulatory approval.