The European Central Bank has selected 36 payment service providers to take part in a digital euro pilot, moving the project into a more practical testing phase after years of design work.

The pilot is expected to begin in the second half of 2027 and run for 12 months. It will take place at the ECB and 19 national central banks across the euro area, including those in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal, Finland, and several others.

The ECB said it received more than 50 applications after opening expressions of interest in March 2026. The selected participants include banks and non-bank payment companies, with a mix of business models, sizes, and geographic coverage.

The trial will use a beta version of the digital euro. It will be close to the design currently envisioned in draft legislation, but it will not have legal tender status.

Some firms will act as distributing payment service providers, giving Eurosystem staff access to beta digital euro services such as account setup and payments. Others will act as acquiring providers, enabling selected merchants to receive beta digital euro payments. Some participants will do both.

The pilot will include person-to-person payments, both online and offline. It will also test consumer-to-business payments at physical points of sale, including software-based point-of-sale systems, as well as e-commerce and mobile payments.

Piero Cipollone, the ECB executive board member leading the digital euro task force, said the level of market interest shows “the private sector’s readiness to engage actively with the digital euro project to strengthen the European payments landscape.”

Stripe is among the companies selected for the pilot. Eileen O’Mara, Stripe’s vice chair, said Europe has a rare chance to shape its digital payments future. She tweeted:

Success will depend on building a digital euro that works for the real economy: one that is easy to integrate and provides the security, reliability, and performance businesses expect from today’s payment infrastructure.

The announcement also drew fresh criticism from digital asset advocates and central bank digital currency skeptics. Handre Van Heerden argued on X that the digital euro would give the ECB too much control over money, raising concerns about traceability, restrictions on spending and possible policy tools such as negative rates or expiry rules.

Those concerns have followed the project for years. Privacy has been one of the most sensitive issues in public debate, while the ECB has framed the digital euro as a way to preserve monetary sovereignty as stablecoins, private payment networks and crypto assets expand.

For Europe, the pilot is a key test of whether a central bank digital currency can meet real-world payment needs without undermining public trust. The technology may be ready, but the harder challenge will be convincing citizens and businesses that the digital euro is useful, private, and worth adopting.

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