The European Central Bank has opened recruitment for e-commerce and mobile-commerce merchants to participate in a 12-month digital euro pilot expected to begin in the second half of 2027. Applications are due by 17:00 CET on October 27, 2026.
The call brings the merchant side of the payment chain into a program that already includes 36 selected payment service providers. Participating businesses will enable beta digital euro payments in remote-commerce environments and test how the proposed instrument could fit into existing checkout and payment processes.
The exercise is a controlled pilot, not a public launch. The ECB says the beta digital euro will be functionally and technically close to the instrument contemplated in draft EU legislation, but it will not have legal tender status. A decision on whether to issue a digital euro will come only after the relevant legislation is adopted.
What the ECB is asking merchants to test
The Eurosystem plans to use the pilot to assess technical functionality, operational processes and user experience. For online merchants, that makes the project an acceptance and integration test rather than a simple demonstration of a new payment button.
Selected businesses will be able to test customer payment journeys, observe how users interact with the beta digital euro and provide feedback on integration, merchant requirements and customer experience. The ECB says their feedback will inform future design decisions and technical specifications.
Participation is voluntary and unpaid. Selected applicants must sign a merchant participation agreement with the ECB and establish or adapt a contractual relationship with an acquiring payment service provider participating in the pilot. The merchants will act as business end users; they are not being appointed to issue the instrument or operate the core infrastructure.
The ECB will evaluate applicants using eligibility requirements and weighted criteria covering market reach, operational readiness and suitability to support the exercise. The current call is specifically for e-commerce and mobile-commerce businesses operating in the euro area. National central banks may recruit additional local merchants separately, while merchants providing everyday services at Eurosystem sites are also expected to participate.
Why merchant participation matters
Payment instruments can perform correctly at the ledger or account layer and still encounter problems at checkout. Merchant testing can expose where payment initiation, confirmation, refunds, reconciliation and exception handling do not fit established commerce workflows. The ECB’s announcement does not specify the final production rules for those functions, so the pilot should be read as a way to gather operational evidence rather than as confirmation that a particular acceptance model has been settled.
The requirement to work with an acquiring pilot provider is especially relevant for processors and acquirers. It places the experiment within a familiar commercial relationship and creates an opportunity to test how digital euro acceptance responsibilities would be divided among merchants, payment providers and the Eurosystem. It also means a merchant’s readiness will depend partly on its ability to coordinate changes with a selected provider.
For participating merchants, the useful questions will extend beyond whether a payment completes. Checkout conversion, transaction confirmation, accounting data, support procedures and failure recovery can determine whether a payment method is workable in day-to-day commerce. The controlled environment gives the Eurosystem and industry participants a chance to identify those issues before any possible issuance.
Timeline remains conditional
The ECB’s digital euro pilot page says the test is planned for the second half of 2027 and will run for 12 months. It will involve the selected payment providers, merchants, and staff from the ECB and participating euro-area national central banks. The broader pilot is expected to cover everyday scenarios that include in-store and person-to-person payments as well as remote commerce.
The ECB will hold an information session for interested merchants at 15:00 CET on October 6. Applicants can also submit written questions through the ECB’s dedicated form before the application deadline.
Recruiting merchants is a concrete preparatory step, but it does not remove the project’s political and legislative conditions. For the payments industry, the immediate development is narrower: the Eurosystem is moving from provider selection toward testing merchant acceptance, and eligible online businesses now have a defined route to participate in that work.