Digital euro glossary

Acquiring PSP

The payment service provider in the digital euro scheme that serves business users — managing their accounts and providing acceptance solutions such as point-of-sale and e-commerce, and integrating with the DESP.

Alias

A unique pseudonymous identifier used to protect a user's identity when processing digital euro payments, attributable to an identifiable person only by the distributing PSP or by the user themselves.

BEAN

The portion of a DEAN occupying positions 5 to 18 — the indicator digit plus the 13-digit serial number. It is the DEAN with the EU prefix and the two check digits stripped off.

Combined transaction

A digital euro transaction involving payment with funding (reverse waterfall) or payment with defunding (waterfall) — a liquidity movement and a payment settled together as one operation.

CPACE

The standard applying to digital euro NFC contactless payments at the point of interaction. It is the contactless protocol layer of the digital euro's technology stack.

DEAN

The Digital Euro Account Number — an 18-character identifier for a digital euro account, built from an EU prefix, two ISO/IEC 7064 MOD 97-10 check digits, an indicator digit and a 13-digit serial. Only the Eurosystem generates them.

Defunding

Removing digital euro from a digital euro account, to a non-digital euro payment account at a scheme participant of the user's choice, or to cash. It can be manual or automatic.

DESP

The Digital Euro Service Platform — the Eurosystem's central platform where digital euro transactions are settled and where account identifiers are generated. PSPs integrate with it over JSON RESTful APIs.

Distributing PSP

The payment service provider in the digital euro scheme that serves individual users — registering them, managing their accounts and aliases, and integrating with the DESP to provide digital euro payment services.

EUDI Wallet

The European Digital Identity Wallet — an EU-wide wallet letting citizens, residents and businesses identify themselves and store digital credentials, established under Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/1183. It is not the digital euro.

Funding

Adding digital euro to a digital euro account, from a non-digital euro payment account held at a scheme participant of the user's choice, or from cash. It can be manual or automatic.

Holding limit

The maximum amount of digital euro a user is allowed to hold. Individuals are subject to a limit whose amount has not yet been set; business users have a holding limit of zero and must pass funds on immediately.

Offline digital euro

A form of digital euro where value is stored on a secure element on the user's own device, paid device-to-device via NFC, with cash-like privacy and without requiring a network connection.

RDG

The Rulebook Development Group — the group that develops the digital euro scheme rulebook in collaboration with the Eurosystem, made up of senior representatives from both sides of the European retail payments market, plus the ECB, national central banks and EU institution observers.

Reverse waterfall

A functionality whereby commercial bank money from a linked non-digital euro account is automatically converted into digital euro when the user's digital euro holdings are not sufficient to execute a payment.

Scheme rulebook

The single set of rules, standards and procedures governing digital euro payments and related activities, ensuring PSPs offer consistent basic services across the euro area. The current published version, v0.91 (July 2026), is a draft.

Secure element

A tamper-proof chip with pre-installed software that can store confidential and cryptographic data and run secure applications. In the digital euro it holds offline value on the user's own device.

SEPI

Secure Exchange of Payment Information — a process substituting payer, or payee and transaction, data with a surrogate value that carries no information itself, but lets the authorised PSP retrieve the data elements needed to instruct settlement.

Technical proof

The technical proof — also called the master seed — is the hash of a generated 24-word passphrase kept secret by the user. It is held by the user and used to generate Entry-IDs, which the PSP uses for settlement instructions.

TSP

Technical service provider — a third party to which a PSP may outsource digital euro development and operations. Outsourcing the work does not outsource the accountability — the PSP retains regulatory responsibility.

Waterfall

A functionality that facilitates settlement by automatically converting digital euro exceeding a defined holding limit into commercial bank money on a linked non-digital euro account chosen by the user.

Wholesale vs retail CBDC

Two distinct kinds of central bank digital currency. Retail CBDC is intended for use by the general public; wholesale CBDC is for settlement between financial institutions. The digital euro is a retail CBDC.