Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, Revolut, Stripe and Adyen made the list. The 12-month trial starts in the second half of 2027, and the money it moves will not be legal tender.
The European Central Bank published the list on Tuesday: 36 payment service providers, drawn from more than 50 applicants, will run the first pilot of the digital euro.
The selected participants stretch from Deutsche Bank, UniCredit and Poste Italiane to Revolut, Stripe, Adyen, SumUp, Satispay, Worldline and the Cooperative Bank of Chania, a Greek co-operative lender that will now sit in a Eurosystem trial alongside two of the largest banks in the currency bloc.
The 36 come from 16 of the euro area’s 21 member states, with Italy supplying seven and Germany five. The ECB says they span “a broad range of business models and sizes”, which is the institutional way of saying that the pilot deliberately mixes incumbent banks with the acquirers and app-based challengers that have taken most of the growth in European payments over the past decade.
The pilot is due to begin in the second half of 2027 and to run for 12 months. It will use a beta version of the digital euro, functionally and technically close to what the draft legislation envisages but carrying no legal tender status, which means nobody is obliged to accept it and no consumer outside the test will touch it.The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
