The European Central Bank has launched a new program to explore how AI agents could use a future digital euro for payments. The work will cover areas including micropayments, machine-to-machine interactions and new features within payment apps.
According to the ECB, companies, fintech firms, payment providers, merchants, public institutions and researchers can apply to join the next stage of its innovation platform. The work will begin in 2027.
One part of the program will focus on future use cases. Participants will study how AI agents could interact with payment systems and with each other, as well as how very small micropayments could be processed.
The ECB will also pay particular attention to privacy, data protection and user control. At the same time, the central bank stresses that the tests do not mean autonomous AI payments will necessarily become part of the final digital euro.
Another track will be more practical. From January to June 2027, participants will build prototypes for electronic receipts, conditional payments, transactions involving multiple senders or recipients, and new features for payment applications.
A separate pilot will begin later
This program is separate from the larger digital euro pilot that the ECB plans to launch in the second half of 2027. It will run for 12 months and involve 36 payment providers, including Deutsche Bank, Revolut Bank, Stripe Technology Europe, UniCredit, Adyen and SumUp.
The pilot will test person-to-person transfers, in-store purchases, online payments and mobile transactions. The test version of the digital euro will not have legal tender status.
The digital euro has not yet been approved
The experiments do not mean that a digital euro will definitely be issued. The ECB will make a final decision only after the European Union completes the necessary legislative process.
If the legal framework is approved, the first possible issuance of the digital euro could take place around 2029. The ECB sees it as a digital form of central bank money for everyday payments alongside physical euro cash.
Why the digital euro is criticized
The crypto community often criticizes the digital euro because it would remain a fully centralized instrument. Unlike Bitcoin and other decentralized assets, issuance and the rules governing the digital euro would be controlled by the European Central Bank and regulated payment intermediaries. Skeptics fear that such a model could increase state control over payments and make financial transactions more dependent on regulators.
Another concern is privacy and the programmability of money. Although the ECB promises strong data protection and stresses that the digital euro will not be “programmable money,” some in the crypto community doubt that these limits will remain unchanged in the future. Critics also argue that the digital euro is unlikely to offer the benefits for which cryptocurrencies are valued, including independence from banks, self-custody and the ability to transact without a central intermediary.
The ECB is also advancing its digital euro strategy for the European payments market.
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