ECB awards 10-year digital euro network contracts to two consortia
ECB awards 10-year digital euro network contracts to two consortia #
The European Central Bank has named the two firms that will form the communications backbone of the digital euro, awarding 10-year network service contracts to separate consortia built around Italian payments specialist Nexi and Spanish telecoms company Telefónica.
The announcement came on 30 October 2026, following a negotiated public procurement procedure the ECB launched in August 2025. Under the dual-award arrangement, the first consortium, pairing Nexi Payments with Deutsche Telekom, had its contract take effect on 28 September 2026 and is already supporting the digital euro pilot. The second consortium, combining Telefónica with Indra’s technology unit Minsait, is scheduled to come online in May 2027.
Both consortia will be responsible for connecting the data centres hosting the Digital Euro Service Platform (DESP) to payment service providers and the national central banks of the Eurosystem. Commercial banks and other PSPs offering digital euro services can route their traffic through either provider, according to the ECB.
The technical responsibilities are divided within each consortium. In the Nexi-Deutsche Telekom arrangement, Deutsche Telekom contributes the underlying network infrastructure while Nexi handles payments integration. In the Telefónica-Minsait grouping, Telefónica provides MPLS network connectivity and SD-WAN, with Minsait responsible for platform integration and security.
The ECB said appointing two independent providers is intended to guard against single points of failure. Building redundancy into the connectivity layer is meant to ensure operational resilience and avoid dependence on a single supplier for infrastructure that could underpin a pan-European retail payment system.
If both providers are fully operational by 2029, the infrastructure will be ready to support a live digital euro. That outcome still requires a formal issuance decision by the ECB Governing Council and the passage of the necessary EU legislation. Separate procurement processes cover other components of the DESP.
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