Eurosystem Opens Digital Euro Pilot Applications to E-Commerce and Mobile Merchants

The Eurosystem has opened applications for e-commerce and mobile-commerce merchants to take part in its planned digital euro pilot, expanding the test beyond the banks and other payment service providers already selected earlier this year. The merchant call is aimed at remote checkout environments, where selected businesses will accept a beta version of the digital euro from participating Eurosystem staff.

The application window is open until 17:00 CET on October 27, 2026. Participation is voluntary and unpaid, and successful applicants will need a contractual relationship with the European Central Bank for the pilot as well as an acquiring payment service provider that can enable beta digital euro acceptance.

The operational pilot is not starting yet. According to the ECB’s digital euro pilot page, the 12-month exercise is planned to begin in the second half of 2027. The work now under way is part of the development phase, when payment providers, central banks and participating merchants prepare systems, user journeys and testing arrangements.

Merchant testing moves the project into online checkout

The new call focuses specifically on remote person-to-business payments in e-commerce and mobile-commerce settings. In practice, selected merchants will add the beta digital euro as a payment option inside controlled online or mobile checkout flows, allowing pilot users to select it, authenticate the payment and receive confirmation in the merchant environment.

That gives the Eurosystem a way to test something more demanding than a closed technical demonstration. Online retail payments require the central bank’s infrastructure, the customer’s payment interface, the merchant’s checkout, and the acquiring provider’s acceptance services to work together in a way that feels familiar enough for users. The pilot is intended to examine technical functionality, operational processes and the customer experience under realistic conditions while remaining limited to a defined group of participants.

Merchants selected through the call are expected to provide feedback on payment journeys, merchant needs, technical setup and customer experience. The ECB says applicants will be assessed using eligibility requirements and weighted criteria that consider market reach, operational readiness and suitability for the pilot. The final number of merchants has not been fixed and will depend on the eligible applications received and the coverage needed across pilot locations.

The eligibility framework is broader than a simple euro-area headquarters test. The ECB’s updated pilot guidance says a merchant may be established elsewhere in the European Union if it can serve at least two pilot locations. Selected merchants will also need to establish or adapt a relationship with an acquiring pilot payment service provider. Existing commercial arrangements can be used where appropriate, but they may need changes for the pilot.

Thirty-six payment providers are already preparing for the 2027 test

The merchant recruitment follows the Eurosystem’s earlier selection of 36 payment service providers from more than 50 applicants. That group includes banks and non-bank payment firms and is intended to provide a mix of business models, sizes and geographic coverage. Some providers will distribute beta digital euro services to individual users, some will support merchants on the acquiring side, and some will perform both roles.

Those providers are now in the development phase. Their work includes connecting to the digital euro service platform, building or adapting pilot payment services, carrying out user testing and back-end certification, and preparing to onboard end users. The ECB and participating national central banks are serving as operational counterparts during that process.

The pilot itself is expected to run at the ECB and 19 participating national central banks. It will cover four prioritised payment uses: online person-to-person payments, offline person-to-person payments using near-field communication, online person-to-business payments at physical points of sale, and online person-to-business payments in e-commerce or mobile-commerce. The current merchant call targets the last of those uses rather than the full pilot scope.

For online retail, the intended test flow allows a shopper to choose the beta digital euro at checkout and then complete the payment through a payment application. Depending on the setup, the process can use an app-to-app handoff or prompt the user to enter an identifier and open the payment application. The pilot is designed to test whether those steps, confirmation screens and merchant-side acceptance processes work reliably from end to end.

The structure also keeps the role of commercial payment providers central. The pilot does not envisage consumers or merchants dealing with the ECB as their everyday payment provider. Participating providers remain responsible for customer-facing services, while the Eurosystem supplies the underlying pilot platform and coordinates the exercise with national central banks.

The beta digital euro is a test instrument, not a launch

The ECB is drawing a clear line between the pilot and a decision to issue a digital euro. The beta version used in the exercise will be designed to resemble key features contemplated for a future digital euro, but it will not have legal tender status. For the online version, the ECB describes it as scriptural money under the current payments framework rather than a banknote, coin or direct account held by a user at the ECB.

That distinction matters because the project remains tied to the European Union’s legislative process. The ECB says it will decide whether to issue a digital euro only after the relevant EU legislation has been adopted. The pilot is therefore meant to build technical and operational readiness and provide evidence on how the design performs, not to pre-empt the legal decision.

The merchant test should also provide information that cannot be obtained from technical specifications alone. Checkout design, failed-payment handling, refunds, merchant onboarding and customer authentication all create practical questions that become clearer when real users and real business systems are involved. The pilot will be limited, but the feedback can help the Eurosystem refine the design before any broader rollout is considered.

Merchants will not be paid for participating, and the ECB says they will not be reimbursed for their own participation costs. Pilot payment service providers likewise may not charge participating merchants or consumers fees for pilot payment services. The exact workload for each merchant will depend on its existing commerce platform, the amount of technical work needed and the scope of its participation.

The next scheduled step for interested businesses is an ECB information session on October 6, 2026, followed by the October 27 application deadline. After merchant selection and technical preparation, the operational pilot is planned for the second half of 2027 and is expected to run for 12 months.