The European Central Bank (ECB) has announced a partnership with Amazon and four other tech companies for the development of a prototype for the EU digital currency (CBDC).
The ECB plans to begin developing potential user interfaces for the digital euro in cooperation with American e-commerce platform Amazon and several other tech companies.
The development of the European CBDC prototype will last until the end of this year. The project aims to test the feasibility of digital euro technologies based on the partner companies’ developments. The cooperation will include the simulation of CBDC transactions and their further processing via the European interface.
The development of the digital euro prototype will be realized this way:
- Amazon. It will help create interfaces focused on e-commerce payments.
- CaixaBank. The Spanish bank will participate in the development of peer-to-peer online payments for the mobile app.
- Worldline. The French multinational payment service will develop an offline version of the app.
- European Payment Initiative (EPI). Sixteen partner banks will participate in providing the payer tools and interface.
- Nexi. The Italian payment company will develop the payee interfaces.
Representatives of the ECB stressed that the prototypes developed at this stage won’t be used in the direct development of the digital euro. They’re only designed to test the workability of the conceived technology.
Recall that the ECB recently said that the main focus of the development of the digital euro will be payments initiated by individuals. The pilot project will be available to Europeans in 2023.
