(Kitco News) - The European Central Bank (ECB) announced that it has selected five new partners to help develop a digital euro prototype, with the tech giant Amazon making the shortlist.
There were a total of 54 applicants that sought to help the ECB with its endeavor, and the bank settled on Amazon, the European Payments Initiative (EPI), Spanish multinational CaixaBank, French payments platform Worldline and Italian payments-focused bank Nexi.
The ECB settled on these choices because they “best matched the specific capabilities required for the assigned use case.” Each of the companies selected will be responsible for a different role in putting together the prototype.
Amazon has been tasked with developing e-commerce payments within the project. CaixaBank will be in charge of developing online peer-to-peer payments for a mobile application, while Worldline is responsible for the offline version. The EPI will manage point of sale payments from the payer while Nexi will handle them for the payee.
The new prototyping exercise is scheduled to begin during the month of September and wrap up by the end of December.
This development comes amid a two-year investigation by the ECB into whether it should issue a digital euro that would be a central bank-issued alternative to cash. It is expected to finish the current phase of its investigation and evaluate the prototypes produced by March 2023.
The main goal of creating a digital euro would be to facilitate personal payments within the European Union. The official decision as to whether the ECB will issue one is due in September 2023.
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There are more than 100 jurisdictions actively exploring the possibility of launching a central bank digital currency, with countries like China leading the way while the U.S. has yet to decide if a digital dollar is in the nation's best interest.
That is likely to change, however, as Friday’s release of a framework for crypto regulation in the U.S. by the White House contained a section that specifically laid out the policy objectives for a U.S. CBDC System, which reflect the federal government’s priorities for a potential U.S. CBDC.
