The European Central Bank (ECB) will launch a 12-month pilot project to test the digital euro in the second half of 2027, pending the prior adoption of the official regulation by the end of 2026. This pilot will bring together 36 selected payment service providers, including BPCE, Deutsche Bank, Stripe, Revolut, Nexi and Worldline, as well as 19 national central banks of the euro area. It will be a beta version without legal tender status, designed to test the infrastructure in real-world scenarios such as in-store payments and peer-to-peer transfers. The official launch of the digital euro remains scheduled for 2029. This initiative comes in the context of the growing dominance of dollar-denominated stablecoins, which the ECB aims to counter with a European reference solution.
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