Short answer
The digital euro innovation platform is the ECB's programme for testing ideas with market participants. Launched in October 2024, its first round (February–May 2025, around 70 participants) tested conditional payments. A second wave, announced on 28 September 2026, covers e-receipts, split payments, conditional payments, app features, AI and public uses. Applications close at 17:00 CET on 9 November 2026.
What is the digital euro innovation platform?
The innovation platform is a collaboration format run by the European Central Bank on behalf of the Eurosystem. It brings private and public organisations together with ECB and national central bank experts to test how a digital euro could support new payment services. It is part of the Eurosystem's preparation work for a possible digital euro, which has not been issued and still depends on EU legislation.
It helps to be clear about what the platform is not:
- It is not the pilot. The ECB's 12-month digital euro pilot, planned from the second half of 2027, is a separate exercise with 36 selected payment service providers, selected merchants and Eurosystem staff. Our pilot guide covers it.
- It is not a grant or procurement. The ECB states in the 2026 call that it will not pay participants or compensate them for their work.
- It is not certification. Taking part does not mean a product is approved, licensed or ready to process real digital euros. Testing so far has taken place in simulated environments in which no real money moves.
- It is not the legislation. The platform explores what could be built on top of the digital euro. The rules on holding limits, fees and privacy are being negotiated separately; see our digital euro legislation tracker.
If you are new to the subject, our digital euro overview explains what the digital euro is. This page covers only the official ECB innovation programme. This is general information, not legal or business advice.
How has the innovation platform developed so far?
The platform has run in two waves. The table summarises what the ECB has published about each.
| Wave | Announced or launched | Activity period | Workstreams | Participants | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First iteration | Call published 31 October 2024, applications until 29 November 2024 | February to May 2025 | "Visionaries" (ideas and long-term potential) and "pioneers" (technical tests of conditional payments) | Over 100 applications; 70 partners listed by the ECB on 5 May 2025 | Outcome report, published 26 September 2025 |
| Second round announced | 26 September 2025 | ECB said details would follow in the first half of 2026 | Not specified at the time | Not applicable | ECB press release |
| New wave (2026 call) | 28 September 2026 | Experimentation January to June 2027 (may be extended); exploration workshops in Q1 and Q2 2027 | "Experimentation" and "exploration" | To be selected; the ECB plans to publish the list in January 2027 | Proofs of concept or prototypes plus reports; possible ECB outcome reports |
Sources: ECB outcome report (September 2025), ECB press release of 26 September 2025, ECB call notice of 28 September 2026 and the call document.
One timing detail is worth noting. In September 2025 the ECB said details of the second round would come in the first half of 2026; the call itself was published on 28 September 2026, and the hands-on work now falls in 2027. Articles written in 2025 that speak of "new experiments in 2026" are therefore out of date.
Who took part in the first round?
The ECB published the names of its first-round partners in an annex to its press release of 5 May 2025. We counted the entries in that list:
| Workstream code in the ECB list | Entries | What it meant |
|---|---|---|
| (P) pioneer | 52 | Technical testing of conditional payments against a simulated back end |
| (V) visionary | 9 | Idea workshops with the ECB and national central banks |
| (B) both | 9 | Took part in both workstreams |
| Total | 70 | 61 entries took part as pioneers and 18 as visionaries |
The 18 visionaries match the figure in the outcome report. The list mixes banks and payment schemes (for example CaixaBank, Erste Group Bank, Bizum, Iberpay, Redsys and equensWorldline), technology and consulting firms (Accenture, SAP Fioneer, Atruvia, Infineon), a retail group's IT arm (Schwarz Corporate Solutions), payment institutions (PostePay, HYPE) and academic bodies (Bocconi University, Politecnico di Milano, Fraunhofer FIT, ESMT Berlin).
Two features of the first round differ from the 2026 call:
- Selection. According to the 2024 call notice, pioneers were not competitively selected: the ECB aimed to accept as many as possible, provided they met formal requirements under Article 30 of the ECB Procurement Decision. Visionaries were selected from more than 65 applicants. The 2026 call uses a structured assessment for every workstream.
- Who could apply. A few entries in the 2025 list appear under personal names. The 2026 call explicitly excludes individuals, sole proprietors and unregistered entities.
What did the first round actually test?
The first iteration is useful context for anyone considering the 2026 call, because the new wave explicitly builds on it.
The visionaries workstream
According to the outcome report, more than 65 organisations applied to the visionaries workstream and 18 were selected. They presented ideas in half-day workshops with the ECB and national central banks. Recurring themes included:
- integrated electronic receipts, giving users their purchase records in one place, with suggested designs in which only buyer and seller see the details;
- conditional payments, such as pay-on-delivery, pay-per-use and milestone payments;
- transport and mobility, including tap-and-go travel with automatic best-fare calculation and automated tolling settlement;
- inclusion and accessibility, such as wallets for children and students and accessible interfaces.
The ECB describes these ideas as an early reference point that may inform future design, not as commitments.
The pioneers workstream and conditional payments
The pioneers ran technical tests of conditional payments in a simulated digital euro back-end environment. The ECB says this environment was simplified, did not represent the final production system and moved no real euros.
The architecture tested is worth understanding, because it shapes the 2026 call:
- The Eurosystem provides a "reservation of funds" function in the settlement layer. When a payment is set up, the amount is blocked in the payer's holding and reduces their available balance, but it is not yet transferred.
- The payment service provider runs the "conditionality layer". The PSP defines and checks the condition, for example confirmed delivery of a parcel.
- If the condition is met, the reserved funds settle to the payee. If not, the reservation is cancelled or expires and the funds become available to the payer again.
Pioneers, acting as simulated PSPs, created end-user and merchant holdings and tested person-to-business payments from reservations, person-to-person payments and business-to-person refunds. The environment also reproduced the planned waterfall and reverse-waterfall mechanisms, which link a digital euro holding to a private bank account so that holding limits do not block payments. Merchants operated with a zero holding limit, with incoming funds moved straight out.
The ECB concluded that the current draft design can support conditional payments. Its press release lists tested use cases including online shopping with release on delivery confirmation, automated insurance reimbursements, refunds for delayed services and shared mobility.
Which innovation projects did the pioneers test, by sector?
The outcome report groups the pioneers' scenarios by sector. The table condenses that section; the examples are participants' proposals tested in a simplified environment, not features the ECB has committed to.
| Sector | Examples in the outcome report | ECB caveat |
|---|---|---|
| Financial services | Milestone payments (for example an online course paid in stages), crowdfunding released by project progress, split payments in a food-delivery marketplace, machine-to-machine "industry 4.0" payments, pay-on-delivery without a third-party escrow agent | Proposals only |
| E-commerce and retail | Release on delivery confirmation, automatic refunds once a returned item arrives, loyalty rewards, group purchases held until every buyer has paid, usage-based subscriptions | Proposals only |
| Transport | Toll amounts pre-authorised on entry and settled on exit, tap-and-go fares with daily caps, end-of-day bundling of small fares, EV charging by actual use, deposits for vehicle damage | Proposals only |
| Financial inclusion and public services | Verifiable credentials for grant eligibility, qualified electronic signatures, deferred payments where connectivity is limited | Digital identity flagged as a future consideration |
| Business-to-business | Milestone and split payments between firms, cross-currency payments released when both sides meet agreed conditions | The report states that the first version of the digital euro will not include B2B use cases, and that cross-currency functionality will not be in the initial release |
Worked example: a usage-based subscription
The report describes a subscription priced by use: €5 for up to five uses in a month, €12 for up to 30 and €15 for more than 30. Mapped onto the reservation-of-funds design described above, the flow would look like this:
- At the end of the month the provider's PSP checks usage. The customer used the service nine times, so €12 is due.
- The PSP asks the Eurosystem back end to reserve €12 in the customer's holding. The customer's available balance falls by €12, but nothing has moved yet.
- The PSP's conditionality layer checks the conditions the parties agreed, for example that the account is still active and no cancellation is pending.
- Conditions met: the €12 settles to the provider. Not met: the reservation is cancelled and the €12 becomes available to the customer again.
The step that matters is the split of roles. The Eurosystem only holds and releases funds; the business logic (counting uses, choosing the price tier) sits with the PSP. That is why the 2026 call talks about standardising conditions between PSPs and merchants rather than adding business rules to the central infrastructure. This is our illustration of the published design, not an ECB specification.
Conditional payments are not programmable money
The ECB is consistent on this point. Conditional payments are transactions executed automatically when agreed conditions are met. Programmable money would restrict where, when or with whom money can be spent. The ECB says the digital euro will never be programmable money, because that would undermine its exchangeability at par with cash and bank deposits. The 2026 call document repeats this distinction.
What does the 2026 innovation call cover?
The 28 September 2026 call organises the new wave into two workstreams with six focus areas.
| Workstream | Focus area | What participants would do | Main target participants named by the ECB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Experimentation | Electronic integrated receipts | Assess ways of generating, sharing and storing e-receipts within a digital euro transaction, then test flows using dedicated APIs | PSPs, technical service providers (TSPs), merchants, point-of-sale vendors |
| Experimentation | Multi-payer and multi-payee transactions | Test split payments (several payers, one transaction) and distributed payments (one payer, several recipients) | PSPs, TSPs, merchants |
| Experimentation | Conditional payments | Explore standardisation between PSPs and merchants, such as a market-provided common conditionality layer, and conditional payments without reserving funds (for example recurring payments) | PSPs, TSPs, merchants |
| Experimentation | Front-end features | Develop user-facing app features, for example behavioural biometrics, AI-enhanced features, budgeting tools and accessibility features | PSPs, TSPs, fintech companies |
| Exploration | AI in payments | Workshops on AI-enabled payment experiences, AI agents, micropayments and machine-to-machine payments, aligned with privacy, trust and user control | PSPs, TSPs, merchants, consumer organisations, academia, fintechs |
| Exploration | Public uses of a digital euro | Workshops on transport, utilities, smart cities and IoT (for example parking and EV charging), financial inclusion and resilience | Public bodies, transport and utility operators, PSPs, fintechs, consumer associations, merchants, academia |
All focus areas are also open to other interested stakeholders, according to the call document. For front-end features, the call encourages participants to look beyond the services that the Eurosystem's own digital euro app will offer.
The ECB's platform overview page describes exploration slightly more broadly, mentioning "innovative offline and user-centred features" alongside AI and public uses. The call document, which governs applications, defines only the two exploration workshops in the table.
How the experimentation workstream works
Experimentation is expected to run from January to June 2027 and may be extended by agreement. Participation is governed by a contract between each selected participant and the ECB. The process described in the call document is:
- virtual workshops with the Eurosystem to understand each proposed solution;
- technical specifications and requirements for connecting to a dedicated digital euro testing environment;
- development of proofs of concept or prototypes;
- a report covering approach, development steps, lessons learned and outcomes.
One technical limitation matters for planning. All experimentation participants interact with the test environment as simulated PSPs, whatever kind of organisation they are, and the initial scope covers PSP-to-back-end interactions only. It does not include full end-to-end transaction flows across several participants.
How the exploration workstream works
Exploration consists of one-off workshops held on site at the ECB's main building in Frankfurt in the first and second quarters of 2027. Some selected applicants will present; others may be selected to attend and contribute to discussion. The ECB notes that cybersecurity, fraud prevention, compliance and internal risk processes are outside the scope of the AI workshop.
Who can apply to the 2026 call?
The call document sets formal eligibility criteria:
- applicants must be legally established organisations within the European Union, which is wider than the euro area;
- applicants must be legally registered entities, such as companies, consumer or industry associations, public authorities or research institutions;
- applications from individuals, sole proprietors and unregistered entities are not accepted;
- applications must be in English, substantially complete and submitted before the deadline.
Joint applications are encouraged, especially when they combine different roles in the ecosystem, such as a merchant and a PSP. A joint application uses a single form.
What is the digital euro innovation deadline, and what happens after it?
The dates below come from the call document and the call notice. Dates after 9 November 2026 are planned, not confirmed outcomes.
| Date | Step |
|---|---|
| 28 September 2026 | Call for expressions of interest published |
| 9 November 2026, 17:00 CET | Deadline for application forms |
| By January 2027 | ECB informs every applicant of the outcome |
| January 2027 | ECB plans to publish the list of selected participants on its website |
| January to June 2027 | Experimentation activities (may be extended by agreement) |
| First and second quarters of 2027 | Exploration workshops at the ECB in Frankfurt |
| After the activities | Possible showcase event and outcome reports with key findings |
If you miss the deadline, the call gives no route for late entries. The ECB has not announced a further wave, so following its innovation platform page is the only reliable way to learn about one.
How do you submit a digital euro innovation application?
As of 5 November 2026, the ECB's innovation platform page states that the call is open and that applications are accepted until 17:00 CET on Monday 9 November 2026. The call notice and call document give the same deadline.
- Read the call document and decide which workstream or workstreams and which focus areas fit your organisation.
- Check eligibility. Confirm you are a registered legal entity established in the EU.
- Complete the application form (Annex 4, an Excel file linked from the ECB notice). For each focus area, describe your motivation, relevant expertise and one or more use cases. If you apply for experimentation, note that participation will be governed by a contract with the ECB, set out in Annexes 1 and 2.
- For a joint application, agree internally who submits and include both parties in one form, following the form's instructions.
- Read the privacy statement and the communication guidelines. The ECB says that submitting the form confirms agreement to the privacy statement, and that applicants agree to be bound by the communication guidelines (Annex 3).
- Email the form to DigitalEuroExperimentation@ecb.europa.eu before 17:00 CET on 9 November 2026. Questions go to the same address.
Late, incomplete or non-English applications will not be considered, so it is sensible not to leave submission until the final hour.
How will the ECB select participants?
The call document lists the evaluation criteria:
- motivation and commitment to contribute for the full duration;
- use case relevance to the focus area and a clear value proposition enabled by the digital euro;
- alignment with digital euro design principles while showing innovation;
- expertise and expected contribution;
- technical readiness (experimentation only): development capacity, people and technical capability to take part in testing.
The ECB will also consider geographic and industry diversity, capacity constraints and technical limitations, and it reserves the right to exclude proposals that do not meet other substantial formal requirements. It will inform applicants of the outcome by January 2027 and plans to publish the list of selected participants on its website in January 2027.
Checklist: mapping an application to the criteria
The ECB does not publish a scoring grid. The table below is our reading of the criteria, written as questions an applicant should be able to answer in the form. It is not ECB guidance.
| ECB criterion | Question your application should answer |
|---|---|
| Motivation and commitment | Who will work on this from January to June 2027, and how much of their time is committed? |
| Use case relevance | Which focus area does the use case fall under, and what does a digital euro make possible that today's card, SEPA instant or wallet payments do not? |
| Alignment with design principles | Does the idea respect privacy, user control and the "no programmable money" line? Does it fit the public draft scheme rulebook? |
| Expertise and contribution | What has your organisation already built or studied in this area, and what will the Eurosystem learn from you? |
| Technical readiness (experimentation) | Can your team integrate with APIs as a simulated PSP and deliver a proof of concept and a written report? |
Common weaknesses to avoid, based on the call text and the first-round report: presenting pay-on-delivery as a new idea (it was tested in 2025), proposing features that restrict how money can be spent, assuming access to real funds or end-to-end flows across several participants, and applying as an individual.
What does participation commit you to, and what does it not give you?
Selected organisations are expected to commit adequate resources and staff for the duration. The work is voluntary and unpaid. The ECB may invite participants to an event to present results and may publish key findings in outcome reports; for experimentation, it may use concepts and general findings from participants' work in public summaries.
Participation does not, on any reading of the official documents, give:
- access to a live digital euro or real funds;
- a place in the 2027 pilot (which has its own selection);
- authorisation to distribute the digital euro, which under the draft legislation is reserved for supervised PSPs;
- any ECB endorsement of a product.
The communication guidelines that applicants accept are a reason to be careful about public statements. Organisations should describe their role precisely, and only once selected.
What other ECB digital euro experimentation has there been?
The innovation platform is not the ECB's first hands-on research project on the digital euro. Readers searching for "digital euro research projects" often find the earlier prototyping exercise, which was a different thing.
| Exercise | When | Who took part | What it tested | Status of outputs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front-end prototyping | July 2022 to February 2023 | Five companies chosen from 54 respondents to an April 2022 call: CaixaBank, Worldline, EPI, Nexi and Amazon | One use case each: person-to-person online and offline, payer- and payee-initiated payments in shops, e-commerce | Learning exercise; the ECB said the prototypes would not be reused in later phases |
| Innovation platform, first iteration | February to May 2025 | 70 partners | Conditional payments (pioneers) and future use cases (visionaries) | Outcome report, September 2025 |
| Innovation platform, new wave | Planned for 2027 | To be selected | E-receipts, multi-payer and multi-payee payments, conditional payments, front-end features; AI and public uses in workshops | List of participants planned for January 2027 |
The ECB's prototype summary concluded that a digital euro could be integrated into the existing payments landscape and could, in principle, work both online and offline. It also noted a limit: because the prototypes were built from scratch, the exercise did not measure the effort of adapting existing PSP systems. The selection notice of 16 September 2022 names the five companies and their use cases.
None of these exercises used real money.
How does the innovation platform fit with the pilot and the legislation?
Three Eurosystem and EU workstreams run in parallel and are easily confused:
| Workstream | Purpose | Who decides | Current status (5 November 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legislation | Sets the legal framework: legal tender, holding limits, fees, privacy | European Parliament and Council | Trilogue negotiations ongoing |
| Pilot | Tests a beta version in real situations for 12 months from the second half of 2027 | ECB | 36 PSPs selected; merchant expression-of-interest window has closed |
| Innovation platform | Explores value-added services and future features with the market | ECB | 2026 call open until 9 November 2026, 17:00 CET |
The innovation platform is the most open of the three to smaller organisations, because it does not require a PSP licence. It is also the least operational. The ECB's call notice states that the final decision on issuing a digital euro will be taken only once the relevant EU legislation has been adopted. Findings from the platform inform design discussions; they do not create market rights. How the pilot and a possible first issuance in 2029 depend on the legislation is set out in our digital euro timeline.
For merchants deciding where to spend attention, our guide for businesses sets out the practical implications of the digital euro as a whole.
Where does DIGITAL EUR's own research fit?
DIGITAL EUR runs a separate, independent research project on user-controlled payment journeys, digital receipts and reconciliation evidence. You can read about it as our independent R&D prototype. That project is not part of the ECB innovation platform, has not been selected by the ECB and is not endorsed by the ECB or the Eurosystem. Some of its themes, such as receipts and conditional logic, overlap with the ECB's published focus areas; that overlap reflects shared industry interest, not any official relationship.
We keep the two pages apart deliberately. This page reports only what the ECB has published about its own programme. Our research page describes our own work and its limits.
Our current reconciliation software works with today's euro payment data. It does not process digital euros and has no connection to the ECB's test environment.
What is still unknown about the innovation platform?
Several points are not answered in the public documents we reviewed:
- How many participants will be selected for each focus area in the new wave.
- The full terms of the experimentation contract, which the call document places in annexes; we have not reproduced their content here.
- Whether outputs will be published in full or in summary. The ECB says it may publish key findings, which suggests summaries.
- Whether later waves will follow. The ECB has not announced anything beyond the 2027 activities.
- How platform findings will feed into the scheme rulebook. The ECB says insights inform its analysis of future enhancements, without committing to adopt any particular feature.
We will update this page when the ECB publishes the list of selected participants or an outcome report.
How can you follow the programme?
- The ECB's innovation platform page is the primary reference for calls and reports.
- The ECB's market infrastructure and payments news section carries call notices.
- National central banks, such as the Banca d'Italia, sometimes relay calls in their own news sections.
- Our digital euro news page records dated developments, such as the publication of selected participants.
Frequently asked questions
Is the 2026 digital euro innovation call still open?
As of 5 November 2026, yes. The ECB's platform page and the call document state that applications are accepted until 17:00 CET on Monday 9 November 2026. Check the ECB page before submitting in case of changes.
Can a start-up or a research institute outside the euro area apply?
Yes, if it is a legally registered organisation established in the EU; the call requires EU establishment, which is wider than the euro area. Fintech companies, research institutes and academic institutions are named among the target groups. Individuals and sole proprietors cannot apply.
What happens after the 9 November 2026 deadline?
The ECB assesses the applications, informs every applicant of the outcome by January 2027 and plans to publish the list of selected participants in January 2027. Experimentation is planned for January to June 2027 and exploration workshops for the first half of 2027.
Who took part in the first round?
The ECB's list of 5 May 2025 names 70 partners: 52 pioneers, 9 visionaries and 9 in both workstreams. They included banks, payment schemes, technology firms, a retail group and universities.
Does the ECB pay participants?
No. The call states that participation is voluntary and that the Eurosystem will not provide financial remuneration or compensation.
Will participants handle real digital euros?
No. The first round used a simulated back-end environment in which no real euros were transferred. The new experimentation workstream uses a dedicated testing environment in which participants act as simulated PSPs.
Does taking part get my company into the 2027 pilot?
The official documents give no indication of that. The pilot has its own selection: 36 PSPs have been chosen and the merchant expression-of-interest period has closed.
Is DIGITAL EUR part of the ECB innovation platform?
No. DIGITAL EUR is an independent company. Its research project is separate from the ECB programme and is not endorsed by the ECB.
Sources
- ECB, Digital euro innovation platform (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, "Call for expressions of interest in a new wave of digital euro innovation platform activities", 28 September 2026 (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, Call document for the new wave of innovation platform activities, 28 September 2026 (PDF) (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, "Digital euro innovation platform. Outcome report: pioneers and visionaries workstreams", September 2025 (PDF) (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, "ECB presents findings from digital euro innovation platform and announces second round of experimentation", 26 September 2025 (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, "Call for expressions of interest in innovation partnerships for the digital euro", 31 October 2024 (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, "ECB partners with private sector through digital euro innovation platform", 5 May 2025 (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, "Digital euro innovation partners", annex to the press release of 5 May 2025 (PDF) (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, "ECB selects external companies for joint prototyping of user interfaces for a digital euro", 16 September 2022 (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, "Digital euro: prototype summary and lessons learned", 2023 (PDF) (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, Digital euro scheme rulebook (draft v0.91, 2 July 2026) (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, Piero Cipollone, "Shaping the future of money", keynote speech, 5 November 2026 (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, Digital euro pilot (accessed 5 November 2026)
- ECB, Digital euro FAQ (accessed 5 November 2026)
- Banca d'Italia, "Call for participation in the new phase of the digital euro innovation platform" (accessed 5 November 2026)