Digital euro could smoothly integrate into payments landscape says Nexi. The company is part of the project having been chosen to develop a prototype for digital payments at physical shop.

While a final decision on issuing a digital euro has yet to be made, the ECB has been busy investigating options ahead of a potential launch, which would come in 2026 at the earliest.

The European Central Bank has published the summary and the lessons learned from the prototyping exercise it has conducted from July 2022 to February 2023 to test how design choices for the digital euro could be technically implemented and integrated into the existing European payments landscape

„The tests showed that it is possible to smoothly integrate them, while leaving ample scope for innovative features and technologies. The findings also confirmed that a digital euro would work both online and offline, using independent designs, thus increasing the resilience of the digital euro.” – according to the press release.

The prototyping exercise is an important part of the investigation phase of the digital euro project. This project was launched by the ECB and the euro area national central banks to ensure that central bank money remains accessible in the digital age. The investigation phase commenced in October 2021 and will be concluded in autumn 2023. It aims to address key issues relating to the design and distribution of a digital euro.

Nexi was selected in 2022 as one of the five companies to provide front-end prototypes to test different payment use cases. In particular, Nexi was chosen for the point-of-sale payments initiated by the payee use case.

“We are honoured to have been chosen to support the European Central Bank during the investigation phase of the digital euro”, commented Roberto Catanzaro, Chief Business Officer Merchant Solutions of Nexi Group and member of the Digital Euro Market Advisory Group. “An engaging user and merchant experience is paramount to ensure wide adoption of the digital euro and we have brought our best expertise in both acceptance and mobile payments technologies to set a clear way forward.”