The European Central Bank (ECB) announced the completion of the competitive selection and the beginning of cooperation with five commercial companies to create a prototype digital euro.
The infrastructure and basic system for the digital euro will be provided by the ECB itself, while the user interfaces for various functions will be developed by third-party commercial companies. The list of partners also includes the American digital commerce giant Amazon.
Amazon will work on a digital euro payment system for e-commerce. CaixaBank (peer-to-peer online payments) and Worldline (peer-to-peer offline payments) will also participate in the creation of the prototype. The European Payments Initiative (EPI) and Nexi will create software for payment terminals.
These companies were selected from 54 firms that had previously expressed interest in the digital euro. Interestingly, the solutions created by these companies are not planned to be used for the final project of the digital euro. Test results will be published next year.
Recall that the ECB invited software developers to take part in a competitive selection to create a prototype user interface for the digital euro at the beginning of this year.
Earlier, representatives of the European Union said that the retail digital euro will not allow companies to pay bills or pay salaries, as well as be used in decentralized finance.
Source: Bits
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