The Digital Euro’s Planned Infrastructure

Europe is edging closer to a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), and the digital euro is moving from policy exploration to infrastructure planning. While headlines tend to focus on privacy, political resistance, or timelines, the real substance lies elsewhere – in how this new form of money will be embedded, accessed, and governed.

This transition is not happening in isolation. European banks have already been repositioning themselves as digital platforms, expanding their reach into mobility, identity, and SME ecosystems. For Europe’s banks, this isn’t just a regulatory development but a design challenge: how will they integrate a new layer of public money into existing private infrastructure?

So the question here is not whether banks will participate – but on what terms, and through which rails.

A Technology Project with Geopolitical Subtext

The European Central Bank (ECB) has framed the digital euro as a strategic response to Europe’s overreliance on non-EU payment providers. 13 countries in the EU rely entirely on international card schemes, which account for more than half of all euro area card payments. Visa, Mastercard, and Apple Pay dominate the market, leaving European infrastructure exposed to political and commercial dependencies. A digital euro offers the promise – or at least the optics – of European payment sovereignty.

But sovereignty is not only about money. It is also about who builds and governs the technical stack.

Digital Euro Technology and APIs

Despite the fog of consultation papers and policy briefings, some technical intentions are becoming clearer.

In October 2025, the ECB announced the selection of five companies – including names like Almaviva, Fabrick, Giesecke+Devrient, equensWorldline – to build core components of the digital euro infrastructure. These components include the wallet, payment initiation, fraud detection, alias lookup, and offline functionality. In parallel, the ECB launched its Innovation Platform – an environment to allow private sector actors to experiment with integration before the rules are finalised.

While the ECB has not yet published API specifications, their intent to support integration through SDKs and APIs is evident. The ECB has reiterated that the digital euro should be interoperable with existing banking infrastructure and payment schemes, and that open interfaces will allow the private sector to innovate on top of the public core. The institution has stated that digital euro services will be accessible not only through a dedicated ECB app, but also via Payment Services Providers (PSPs) own apps, if they choose to integrate the digital euro into their payment solutions.

The digital euro Rulebook Development Group (RDG), has been preparing the rulebook that will provide a set of rules, standards and procedures to standardised use of the digital euro across the eurozone.

The digital euro rulebook version 0.9, a draft published in June 2025, provides guidelines about the services scope, eligibility rules, functional and technical requirements, risk management, dispute management, minimum UX requirements, brand rules and even fees and thresholds.

For example, in terms of standards, the rulebook presents the preliminary candidates for three different domains: user domain, PSP domain, and DESP (digital euro services platform) domain. The DESP platform will enable issuance and redemption of the euro as well as functions such as settlement. The standards in this last domain will “adhere to the structure of market-standard RESTful APIs” (e.g. Berlin Group). Already in 2023, the Berlin Group announced a collaboration with Nexo – one of the candidates for POS and ATM standards – to support the design of technical standards that ensure interoperability of digital euro payments.

The rulebook also provides minimum user experience requirements which, according to their fourth progress report published in April, aim to provide a consistent experience across the entire eurozone while “preserving ample flexibility to develop innovative solutions”.

Thus, while the rulebook does provide rigid minimum requirements to ensure accessibility and fairness to European citizens, it seems to want to strike a balance that might enable PSPs to enhance digital euro services. But to what end? Basic digital euro services are expected to be free for end consumers, while merchant payment processing fees, which are the only way to reimburse PSP costs (onboarding, operation, etc.), will be capped. In this case, developing value added services around the digital euro will be critical for PSPs participating in the scheme. As of October 2025, the fees section of the rulebook is still to be completed.

The Digital Euro vs Wero

An emerging conflict is the potential battle with Wero, a scheme launched in July 2024 by the European Payment Initiative, a consortium of 16 European banks and financial services companies. Currently active in Germany, France, and Belgium, Wero builds on SEPA Real-time/ SCT Inst payments to offer instant P2P payments and aims to become Europe’s sovereign payment solution.

Overlapping goals, target user groups and use cases may lead to competition between these two solutions. Certain financial institutions have expressed concerns that the split focus on these two approaches may slow down the achievement of an effective pan-European payment infrastructure. In particular, the President of the Hessian Savings Banks Association called for abandonment of the digital euro to accelerate expansion of Wero as the sole EU payment method ‘because some banks in Europe do not want to set up parallel structures and are therefore waiting to see what happens’.

On the other hand, the BEUC has also voiced concerns surrounding the level of fraud protection offered by Wero, claiming it does not reach the level of international card schemes.

As of now, development of the digital euro is continuing, but whether these two solutions can coexist and even complement each other is still to be seen.

Competition and Opportunities

European banks have spent the better part of a decade investing in API technologies and strategies. Open Banking accelerated this trend, but so did internal demands for faster product launches, modularity, and streamlined partner integrations. The digital euro might test these investments.

Key considerations:

Value-added services: To what extent will PSPs be able to bundle additional services – such as expense management, loyalty, or analytics – around digital euro payments?
Standardisation: Which existing payment and identity standards (e.g. SEPA, NextGenPSD2, openFinance, eIDAS) will be used or adapted for digital euro APIs?
Fee models and commercial incentives: What opportunities might there be for creating revenue through distributing or servicing digital euro wallets? What value can PSPs add?
Wallet interface flexibility: How much latitude will PSPs have to customise the user experience?
Data access: Will banks be able to access and use transaction data, and if so, under what regulatory or commercial terms?
Testing and certification: The ECB’s Innovation Platform provides an environment for sandbox testing, but what will a formal conformance framework look like for broader rollout?

The digital euro will introduce a new form of money, but it will also challenge the assumptions underpinning digital financial infrastructure. In this environment, value won’t stem from exclusivity or access control, but from the ability to orchestrate – to bring together public rails and private experience, and to build new, user-facing propositions on top.

The digital euro might not completely replace banks, but it can redefine their role within a new monetary and technical order. For banks invested in API-led transformation, the digital euro is both a challenge and an inflection point. This will mean recalibrating (once again) their positioning in a shifting landscape.

As usual, banks that treat APIs not just as technical channels but as strategic interfaces are more likely to maintain relevance. The ECB is building the pipes, but it remains to be seen who builds the bridges.