The European Central Bank (ECB) has issued a call for experts to participate in two workshops focused on the role of technical service providers in supporting market readiness for the European Union’s long-mooted digital euro.
In October 2025, the ECB Governing Council announced the next phase of the digital euro project, including the launch of a pilot in the second half of 2027, with a view to a potential first issuance of the EU’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) in 2029.
As part of getting the digital euro ready for this launch, the ECB is now inviting technical service providers (TSPs), active in the retail payment industry and established in the EU, to participate in two “expert-level workshops” exploring their potential role in “fostering market readiness for a potential issuance of the digital euro.”
TSPs are broadly defined as providers of services that, although not being payment service providers (PSPs), are necessary to support the provision of payment services.
According to the ECB’s January 27 announcement, PSPs will carry out both distribution and acquiring activities in relation to pilot digital euro services, “ensuring that consumers and merchants have access to these services,” but these PSPs may choose to rely on TSPs to support their development efforts.
As explained by the ECB: “TSPs can deliver synergies for PSPs, reducing costs while helping to deliver robust, efficient and innovative solutions for a digital euro.”
Thus, the ECB is calling for interested TSPs to participate in two separate half-day workshops: one focusing on TSPs that can support PSPs in distributing digital euro payment services to consumers, and the second focusing on TSPs that can support digital euro payment services for merchants and acquiring PSPs.
The ECB said that the aim of the workshops is to facilitate a stocktake of the current European TSP market supporting retail payment services and assess its capabilities; explore which parts of the PSP value chain for digital euro services could be supported by TSPs; and gather views on how the Eurosystem could help these services’ market readiness for the digital euro.
Applicants have until February 10 to indicate which workshops they wish to attend, with the workshops scheduled to take place early the following month.
Digital euro progress
The EU and ECB have been working on a possible digital euro since 2021, as a viable digital payment option that covers the entire eurozone and an alternative to the dominant United States-based Visa (NASDAQ: V) and Mastercard (NASDAQ: MA) systems.
The ECB has been the driving force behind the project, but EU lawmakers will have the final decision on whether to launch the CBDC, and they’ve been dragging their feet on the necessary legislation. This has put the digital euro project in somewhat of a limbo, as the ECB continues to gradually iron out the technical details and prepare for a pilot, without knowing if it will ever see the light of day.
However, toward the end of last year, it appeared that the legislative procrastination may finally be coming to an end. Speaking at Bloomberg’s Future of Finance event in Frankfurt, Germany, last September, ECB executive board member Piero Cipollone hailed a “major breakthrough” after the EU finance ministers agreed on a framework for customer holding limits, a key feature for controlling usage and safeguarding bank deposits.
“The discussion at the level of member-states is going very well,” he said. “The middle of 2029 could be a fair assessment.”
This was followed, in October, by the ECB announcing seven companies with whom it signed framework agreements for various digital euro components and services. Specifically, for alias lookup, risk and fraud management, app and software development kit, offline solution, and secure exchange of payment information.
While this represented progress, and the ECB’s latest call for experts signals continued work towards a 2029 launch, the central bank was keen to reiterate on Tuesday that “the final decision on whether to issue a digital euro will be taken only once the relevant EU legislation has been adopted.”
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Source: https://coingeek.com/ecb-urges-tech-service-providers-to-help-build-digital-euros/