ECB Seeks AI-Powered Payment Ideas for Digital Euro by November 9

The European Central Bank (ECB) has launched a new round of innovation work on the planned digital euro, inviting companies to explore how AI agents, micropayments, and machine-to-machine transactions could work with the currency. The ECB published a call for expressions of interest on September 28, opening a new wave of its digital euro innovation platform. Organisations have until November 9, 2026, to apply, while the ECB plans to publish the list of selected participants in January 2027.

The AI focus area sits within the Exploration workstream, which the Eurosystem will run through one-off workshops at the ECB's Frankfurt headquarters in the first half of 2027. The workshops will examine AI-enabled payment experiences, AI agents, micropayments, machine-to-machine interactions, and new user-facing features inside payment apps.

The ECB wants participants to explore how these developments could create new payment use cases for consumers and businesses and what they could mean for the future design of the digital euro. Participants must also show how their proposals fit the currency's design principles, including privacy, trust, user control, and data protection. Cybersecurity, fraud prevention, compliance, and risk management are outside the scope of the AI work.