Five companies have been selected by the European Central Bank (ECB), to develop interfaces for a new digital euro. The ECB will assign each company to a specific use case for the digital euro. Amazon was chosen to concentrate on ecommerce payments.
Five Companies and the ECB collaborate on Digital Euro
The European Central Bank (ECB) announced Friday that it will collaborate with five companies “to develop potential user interfaces” for a digital euro.
The ECB explained the following:
This prototyping project is designed to evaluate how the technology behind a digital Euro integrates with company-developed prototypes.
The ECB will select one company to collaborate with and each focus on a specific use of a digital Euro.
Worldline and Caixabank are focusing their efforts on peer to peer online payments. Nexi and EPI are focused on point-of–sale payments that the payer initiates. Amazon will be focusing on ecommerce payments.
The five companies were chosen from a pool of 54 front-end providers, the European central bank detailed, adding that they best matched the “specific capabilities” required for the assigned use case.
The ECB stressed:
Prototyping is an essential part of the two-year long investigation phase for the digital euro project. This prototyping exercise is anticipated to be finished in the first trimester of 2023. The ECB will then publish the findings.
“Simulated transactions will be initiated using the front-end prototypes developed by the five companies and processed through the Eurosystem’s interface and back-end infrastructure,” the ECB noted. “There are no plans to re-use the prototypes in the subsequent phases of the digital euro project.”
The ECB began to investigate what its central bank’s digital currency (CBDC) might look like last October. However, the investigation phase is expected to last approximately two years. Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB stated in February that a virtual euro would not replace cash. However, it will be able to complement it. “A digital euro would give you an additional choice about how to pay and make it easier to do so, contributing to accessibility and inclusion,” she explained.
How do you feel about the ECB selecting these five companies as developers of user interfaces to a digital Euro? Leave your comments below.
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