Call for interest: technical talks on programmable digital euro payments

3 November 2022

The ECB is inviting experts from the payment industry to take part in technical talks, in order to explore options for the provision of programmable payment services in digital euro.

The talks will centre around the following questions:

• Which use cases do you see as being key for programmable payment services in the area of retail payments?
• Which standards, if any, would you deem essential to foster innovation in programmable payment services?
• Which core capabilities should a back-end IT architecture for the settlement of payments offer to facilitate programmable payment services?

The talks are expected to take place in December 2022. They will be held at expert level as closed sessions with members of the ECB’s digital euro project team. Observers from national central banks in the euro area will attend the sessions. Each talk will comprise a presentation lasting approximately 20 minutes, followed by around 25 minutes for questions and answers with the digital euro project team.

To take part, please email DigitalEuro@ecb.europa.eu by 18 November 2022, stating which questions(s)/topic(s) you wish to address and describing, in no more than 500 words, the technical problems envisaged and the solutions you would like to intend to propose.

We will assess your application on the basis of its relevance to the questions listed above, its potential for practical implementation within a widely used retail payments solution and the novelty of its approach.

Background to the technical talks

On 1 October 2021 the ECB launched a digital euro investigation phase. During this phase, which is expected to take two years, we will look at how a digital euro could be designed and distributed to retailers and the public. After the investigation phase concludes the Eurosystem will decide whether to start developing a digital euro.