The European Central Bank has signed agreements with ECPC, nexo standards, and Berlin Group to use open standards for digital euro online payments, promoting cost efficiency and interoperability across Europe.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has signed agreements with three European standard‑setting organizations — ECPC, nexo standards, and the Berlin Group — to reuse existing open technical standards for processing digital euro online payments.
The standards include:
By leveraging these open standards and collaborating with standardisation bodies, the ECB aims to minimize adoption costs and encourage early coordination among payment providers and stakeholders.
Europe currently relies heavily on proprietary standards owned by international card schemes and digital wallets. Using European standards will simplify digital euro acceptance, create a uniform user experience, and enable payment schemes to expand geographically and diversify use cases. For example, a national card scheme could extend to point-of-sale environments outside its home market without upgrading terminals.
The benefits of these standards will materialize ahead of digital euro issuance. Once the digital euro regulation is adopted by EU co-legislators, providing legal certainty and support for standards across the euro area, payment providers will be able to scale beyond national borders. This will also reduce Europe’s current dependencies in payments.
ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone stated, “This partnership shows our strong commitment to making sure the digital euro works with existing European standards that the private sector can also use. The open standards will provide a European free alternative to proprietary standards, facilitate market entry for new providers, and give certainty for investments and innovation.”
Representatives from ECPC, nexo standards, and Berlin Group expressed their support, emphasizing the importance of open standards for a competitive and interoperable European payments market.
The standards were selected with input from market participants and support the Eurosystem payments strategy. Additional standards may be adopted in the future, subject to ECB approval.
For media inquiries, contact Georgina Garriga Sánchez at +49 69 1344 95368.
Payment standards are essential for ensuring unified communication between payment service providers and infrastructures, reducing complexity, lowering costs, and supporting innovation and market integration.
About ECPC: Founded in 2020 by six European firms, ECPC develops free, independent standards for contactless payments, notably CPACE, with positive market acceptance across Europe.
About nexo standards: An international non-profit association based in Brussels, promoting global payment acceptance standards to ensure interoperability.
About the Berlin Group: A European standardisation body supporting open standards for digital payments.
