The European Central Bank moved the digital euro project into a more operational phase, opening a call for industry specialists to help draft the technical rules that would connect a future digital euro to existing ATMs and payment terminals. The initiative shifts the discussion from broad policy design to the practical standards that would determine how the currency works in everyday payment environments.
The new consultation makes clear that the ECB is no longer focused only on the concept of a digital euro, but on the infrastructure required to make it usable across today’s payments landscape. The immediate objective is to define how the digital euro would interact with current devices, support offline transactions, and fit into the operational frameworks already used by European payment providers.
The ECB is now working on the technical backbone
Two dedicated workstreams have been placed under the Rulebook Development Group to handle that next stage. Workstream G5 will prepare the implementation specifications for ATM and payment-terminal integration, while workstream B1 will design the testing and certification framework for payment solutions used by Payment Service Providers. The ECB said applications for both groups will close on April 10, 2026.
G5 will focus on the technical specifications that ATM providers and terminal manufacturers would need to follow. Its mandate includes communication technologies, offline digital-euro functionality, and the reuse of existing European payment standards to keep compatibility with deployed hardware as broad as possible. The ECB is specifically seeking contributors with expertise in supplying or integrating ATM and payment-terminal equipment.
B1 will take on the control and approval side of the project. Its task is to define the testing regimes, certification processes, and approval criteria that payment solutions and supporting infrastructure would need to meet before PSPs could use them in the digital-euro ecosystem. That makes certification a central gatekeeping mechanism rather than a secondary compliance layer.
The ECB wants integration, not parallel infrastructure
The design logic behind these workstreams is clear. By anchoring the digital euro to existing terminals and ATMs, the ECB is trying to avoid forcing merchants, PSPs, and consumers into a completely separate acceptance network. In practical terms, the strategy is about embedding a new form of public money into systems people already use rather than building an entirely new payments environment from scratch.
That ambition carries a meaningful cost. The ECB’s planning documents estimate that banks will face adaptation and connectivity expenses of between €4.0 billion and €5.8 billion over the 2025 to 2029 period. Those figures underline how significant the transition could become for the banking and payments industry if the project moves into live deployment.
The timetable remains conditional but increasingly concrete. The ECB is targeting a pilot exercise in the second half of 2027 and a possible first issuance in 2029, assuming the required legislation is adopted on time. That means the rulebook work now underway will shape the standards and controls that vendors, banks, and PSPs may ultimately have to implement over the next several years.
Vendors and payment providers will need to prepare for firmware changes, backend integration work, certification procedures, and closer coordination with national and European infrastructures as the rulebook evolves. The digital euro is still not live, but the ECB is clearly building the technical and supervisory architecture that would make it operational.
