Digital euro scheme rulebook

The digital euro scheme rulebook will establish a single set of rules, standards and procedures for digital euro payments and related activities. It aims to ensure that payment service providers (PSPs) participating in the digital euro scheme offer consistent and standardised basic digital euro services, providing a private, secure and harmonised experience for users across the euro area, regardless of the country they are in or the PSP involved – as is the case with cash today.

How is the rulebook being developed?

The Eurosystem is developing the rulebook in close collaboration with the digital euro scheme’s Rulebook Development Group. This key group in the digital euro project brings together senior representatives from associations representing both the supply and demand sides of the European retail payments market, along with the ECB, euro area national central banks and observers from EU institutions. It therefore represents individual users, business users, supervised PSPs and third-party service providers.

The Rulebook Development Group helps to advance the rulebook through regular meetings, dedicated workstreams with market experts, deep-dive sessions and large-scale market consultations of the members’ constituents on interim versions of the rulebook. 

The decision on whether to issue the digital euro will only be considered once the European Union’s legislative process has been completed.

What will the digital euro scheme rulebook cover?

The digital euro rulebook is addressed to supervised PSPs participating in the digital euro scheme, and will cover:

• the scope of the digital euro scheme and rulebook, including the different use cases, actors in the scheme, types of connectivity (online and offline), and the types of payment instruments, acceptance devices and communication technologies that can be used for digital euro payments;
• the functional and operational model of a digital euro, including service descriptions, functional rules for each digital euro service, end-to-end flows, user journeys, minimum user experience requirements and brand rules;
• technical requirements, including front and back-end implementation specifications for PSPs, application programming interface standards and functional and security standards;
• risk management requirements and dispute management framework;
• the scheme’s adherence model, including eligibility criteria, the onboarding process and the certification and testing framework for digital euro solutions;
• scheme management rules, including governance and change management processes.

Scheme rulebook documentation

Below you can find all the latest rulebook-related documentation, including draft versions, reports, and meeting agendas and outcomes.