The European Central Bank (ECB) has published its second progress report on the preparation phase of a digital euro, laying the foundations for the potential issuance of the CBDC.
Since the publication of the first progress report, the ECB has updated its digital euro scheme rulebook, aimed at harmonising digital euro payments across the euro area and concluded a call for applications for selecting potential providers of digital euro components and related services.
The central bank says it has now invited selected bidders to tender, with the outcomes set to be finalised next year.
At the same time, new user research and experimentation activities have been kicked off to gather insights into users’ preferences and to inform decision-making. These will focus on special target groups, such as small merchants and vulnerable consumers and will be published in mid-2025.
The ECB is also joining with key stakeholders, including merchants, payment service providers, fintech companies and universities, to form innovation partnerships to test conditional payments and explore other potential use cases for a digital euro.
In parallel, the ECB is working with experts from the national central banks of the Eurosystem and national authorities to develop a methodology for setting digital euro holding limits. This work will allow the ECB to determine the factors to be considered in the calibration, and to propose a methodology to calibrate the digital euro holding limits. The proposed method will be tested in a first analysis in the course of 2025.
A decision on whether to move on to a next phase of preparations will not be taken until the end of 2025.