The European Central Bank has opened applications for online merchants to join a controlled pilot of the digital euro, its proposed retail central bank digital currency. The move brings the 2027 test closer to online checkout, but it does not put an issued digital euro into public circulation.
The Sept. 15 merchant call gives EU-established e-commerce and mobile-commerce businesses until 17:00 CET on Oct. 27 to apply. Applicants must serve customers across at least two euro-area countries included in the pilot and operate an active platform flexible enough to integrate the test payment flow.
The beta will not constitute the digital euro defined under the proposed EU Regulation and will not carry legal-tender status. That boundary is central to the exercise: it lets the Eurosystem test payment rails, operating processes and user experience under controlled conditions without making the instrument ordinary public money.
Testing the path from provider to checkout
Merchants selected for the pilot will need to contract and integrate with an acquiring payment service provider. The ECB selected 36 providers in July for acquiring, distributing, or dual roles, creating the network needed to connect test users with participating businesses.
In practical terms, distributing providers will give eligible users access to beta services, while acquiring providers will allow merchants to receive the test payments. This two-sided setup lets the pilot test both access to the beta service and merchant acceptance rather than treating checkout as an isolated interface.
Merchant participation is voluntary and unpaid, so the new call tests whether businesses can fit the proposed payment flow into existing online and mobile commerce operations.
The pilot’s 12-month operational phase is expected to begin in the second half of 2027. The detailed schedule places operations from the third quarter of 2027 through the third quarter of 2028, after integration and testing.
Before that operating phase, merchants and providers will prepare their connections inside the controlled pilot timetable. The ECB’s pilot FAQ says the operational phase could be extended by up to six months.
The exercise will inform technical work but will not decide whether to issue a digital euro. The European Parliament authorized negotiations on the proposed legal framework in July, and the legislation remained under discussion when the merchant call opened. Even after lawmakers adopt a framework, the ECB would still need to make a separate issuance decision.
The application window moves the project into a more realistic commerce test without crossing its legal or monetary threshold. Merchants can test how a possible future payment method would work at checkout, while the final design, legal basis, and decision to issue remain unsettled.
