Amazon will test the digital euro for the ECB

These organizations include Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce company by market capitalization, and the European Payments Initiative, a group of three dozen banks and financial institutions.

Other participants included the Spanish bank CaixaBank, the French payment platform Worldline and the Italian bank Nexi.

In total, there were 54 applicants with the “specific capabilities” needed to test a range of digital euro transactions.

The ECB is only halfway through its study on whether or not a digital euro should be introduced as an alternative to cash.

There is no decision yet, but by all agreements it should be made in September 2023.

Be that as it may, the prototyping project will test not only various processes in different application areas of the digital euro, but also possible variants of its design, the results of which are expected in the first quarter of next year.

For the upcoming tests of the digital euro in circumstances as close to real as possible, Amazon and other companies were chosen.

Under the ECB plan, for example, Amazon will work to develop digital payment processes in euros directly in e-commerce.

CaixaBank will develop a mobile app that mimics the steps users will take to transfer digital euros to their bank accounts or transfer digital euros to others.

Worldline will study offline payments between individuals, while EPI and Nexi will work on retail payments at the point of sale.