The ECB published a Eurosystem report outlining why a “digital euro” (a retail central bank digital currency) might be needed and what design choices would matter. It framed the digital euro as central bank money in digital form for everyday payments, intended to complement cash rather than replace it. This report set the baseline for public and expert feedback that followed.
The ECB opened a public consultation to collect views on the possible benefits, risks, and features of a digital euro. This step mattered because it signaled that design questions—especially privacy and usability—would be shaped by citizen and market input, not only internal technical work.
ECB Executive Board member Fabio Panetta briefed the European Parliament’s ECON committee on the digital euro and the Eurosystem’s goals. The appearance helped establish political oversight and highlighted the need to balance innovation with safeguards like security and anti-illicit-finance controls.
The ECB ended its digital euro consultation after receiving a record number of responses (over 8,000). Early results showed privacy as the top requested feature, followed by security and the ability to pay across the euro area, shaping later design priorities.
The ECB released a detailed analysis of consultation responses, confirming privacy as the leading public concern and preference. It also noted interest in integration with existing banking and payment systems, pointing toward a model where supervised intermediaries (like banks) provide customer-facing services.
The ECB Governing Council approved the start of a formal “investigation phase” for the digital euro project, planned to last about 24 months. The goal was to explore design and distribution options—such as privacy approaches, offline use, and limits—without yet deciding to issue a digital euro.
The ECB named 30 senior private-sector experts to a Market Advisory Group to provide industry input on design and distribution. Regular meetings were intended to help ensure the project could work in real payment markets, including coordination with the Euro Retail Payments Board.
During the investigation phase, the ECB issued a call for expressions of interest to develop prototype user interfaces for digital euro payments. This mattered because the ECB aimed to test how consumer-facing “front ends” could connect to Eurosystem back-end infrastructure across common payment use cases.
The ECB selected five companies to work on prototypes for specific payment scenarios (including peer-to-peer online/offline, point-of-sale flows, and e-commerce). The ECB emphasized that the prototypes were for testing integration and learning, with no plan to reuse them as production systems.
To promote transparency, the ECB published documents shared with the selected prototype providers, including a technical onboarding package and core settlement API material. This step helped broaden understanding of how a digital euro could be implemented technically while keeping technology choices open.
The ECB published a progress update describing design and distribution options endorsed by the Governing Council. It clarified expected roles: supervised intermediaries would handle onboarding and compliance checks, while the Eurosystem would provide settlement, aiming for euro-area-wide reach.
The ECB summarized findings from market research and prototyping, concluding that integration into the existing payment landscape appears technically feasible. It also noted a key open issue: whether an offline solution meeting Eurosystem requirements could be delivered at scale in the short to medium term using existing technology.
The ECB Governing Council concluded the two-year investigation phase and decided to move into a “preparation phase.” This next stage was framed as building foundations—such as finalizing a rulebook and selecting potential technology providers—while still not being a final decision to issue a digital euro.
European Central Bank digital euro experiments and policy timeline (2020–2023)