The European Central Bank has opened applications for vendors to provide components and related services for a potential digital euro in contracts that could total more than EUR1 billion.
Following a lengthy investigation phase, in October the ECB moved onto the preparation phase of the digital euro, although no final decision on a roll out has yet been made.
The central bank has now issued calls for applications to establish framework agreements for the alias lookup component; the fraud and risk management component; the app and SDK components; the offline services component; and the secure exchange of payment information component.
The ECB will invite the highest ranked respondents to submit offers in a subsequent Invitation to Tender.
In total, the five agreements could be worth around EUR1.1 billion to vendors and would run for four years from early 2025.
Other components, such as payment settlement, would be sourced internally from within the Eurosystem.