The ECB inked Memoranda of Understanding with ECPC (European Card Payment Cooperation), nexo standards, and the Berlin Group on April 24, 2026. Each organization covers a distinct layer of how the digital euro would actually move between people, merchants, and financial institutions. The agreements apply specifically to online digital euro payments; offline functionality is being handled in a separate workstream. The ECB has also indicated that additional standards could follow pending Governing Council approval, signaling that the agreements signed today are not the final word on scope.

How the Technical Stack Breaks Down

The three standards bodies divide responsibility across the payment chain. ECPC's CPACE standard handles the tap-to-pay layer at point of sale, using Near Field Communication (NFC) to connect a payment device to a terminal. nexo standards sit one step back, linking merchant-side systems to the payment service providers and acquirers that process transactions behind the scenes. The Berlin Group covers account access and interoperability: alias-based payments (where a mobile phone number substitutes for a full account number), balance checks, and reconciliation across mobile devices.

All three standards are publicly accessible. The ECB has been explicit that this is a deliberate design choice, intended to lower the barrier for new entrants and prevent the digital euro's infrastructure from falling under the control of proprietary networks.

ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone, who signed the agreements, said the open standards "will provide a European free alternative to current proprietary standards, make it easier for new European providers to enter the market and give European payment service providers and merchants the certainty they need to invest, innovate and compete across the euro area."

The Sovereignty Argument

The political logic behind the open-standards commitment is visible in one number: nearly two-thirds of card-based transactions in the eurozone are currently processed by non-European companies, primarily Visa and Mastercard. An ECB Executive Board member, speaking in February 2026, described the digital euro's infrastructure as a "public rail network," framing it as a platform on which private companies, including existing European fintechs, can compete without being locked into foreign commercial infrastructure.

That framing matters for developers and payment businesses outside Europe as well. The nexo standards and Berlin Group specifications will be publicly available when finalized, targeted for Summer 2026. Any team building payment integrations that could eventually interface with eurozone systems can engage with those specifications as soon as they are published.

Where the Project Stands

The digital euro has been in a formal preparation phase since November 2023. That phase closed in October 2025, after the ECB received more than 2,000 comments on its draft rulebook from market participants. The Governing Council subsequently approved moving into a technical capacity-building phase ahead of a potential issuance decision.

Recruitment of payment service providers for a pilot program closes in May 2026, with participant notifications in June. A 12-month real-world pilot is planned for the second half of 2027. Full issuance, if it happens, is currently projected for 2029, and it depends on the EU co-legislators passing a digital euro regulation this year.

The projected cost of building the system through 2029 is approximately 1.3 billion euros, with annual operating costs estimated at around 320 million euros per year after launch. Industry-wide implementation costs for banks and payment service providers are estimated separately at 4 to 6 billion euros, according to figures cited by Catenaa and KPMG.

Regional Relevance: South Asia and Africa

The digital euro is scoped as a eurozone retail instrument at launch, which limits its direct utility for users outside Europe in the near term. But two specific dynamics are worth tracking for South Asian and African readers.

On India: the ECB is actively assessing an interoperability link between its TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) platform and India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which processes roughly 500 million transactions per day. India received approximately 120 billion dollars in remittances in 2023, with a significant share originating from the European diaspora in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The Berlin Group's alias-based payment architecture is structurally similar to UPI's Virtual Payment Address system, which could reduce integration complexity if a formal linkage is approved.

On Africa: the continent carries some of the world's costliest remittance corridors, with average fees running at 7.7 percent to sub-Saharan Africa against a UN Sustainable Development Goal target of 3 percent. More than 75 percent of sub-Saharan African countries are engaged in CBDC research or planning, according to IMF data. The ECB's open, two-tier distribution model could serve as a reference architecture for those programs. The transparency of its standards also stands in contrast to infrastructure built around geopolitical leverage. A Robert Schuman Foundation analysis documented how China's digital yuan (e-CNY) has been deployed as a soft-power instrument in African markets, with Ethiopia and Angola cited as specific cases. The institutions behind the digital euro's standards carry weight of a different kind: nexo standards is a Brussels-based nonprofit, and the Berlin Group's specifications already underpin SEPA's NextGenPSD2 framework, giving both bodies established credibility with regulators and financial institutions across the region.

What to Watch Next

The most concrete near-term milestone is the publication of finalized technical standards in Summer 2026. That release will define what developers can actually build against. Questions around holding limits for digital euro wallets, a parameter with direct implications for app developers and businesses, remain unresolved, with no confirmed timeline for resolution.