Glossary
RDG
The Rulebook Development Group develops the digital euro scheme rulebook with the Eurosystem, bringing together both sides of European retail payments.
Definition
RDG
Also written as: Rulebook Development Group
The RDG is the answer to "who is actually writing this thing?"
What it is
The Rulebook Development Group develops the digital euro scheme rulebook in close collaboration with the Eurosystem. Its membership is deliberately broad:
- Senior representatives from associations representing the supply side of the European retail payments market.
- Senior representatives from associations representing the demand side.
- The ECB and the euro area national central banks.
- Observers from EU institutions.
The supply/demand split is the structurally interesting part. Supply means the people who would build and operate digital euro services — banks, PSPs, processors. Demand means the people who would use them — consumers, retailers, businesses.
Why it is built this way
A scheme written only by the institutions that must implement it optimises for what is convenient to build. A scheme written only by regulators optimises for policy and discovers cost at launch. Putting both sides plus the central banks in one room is an attempt to avoid both failure modes.
It also creates a genuine feedback loop. A large-scale market consultation ran from June to October 2025, and the resulting feedback was worked into the draft that became rulebook v0.91, published in July 2026.
Why you should care
The RDG publishes progress reports as the rulebook develops. If you are at a PSP trying to anticipate what is coming rather than react to it, those reports are the most useful early signal available — they show which areas are being worked on before the changes land in a published draft.
For example, work reported in the last quarter of 2024 covered the alias look-up service and the SEPI service, including QR-code and pay-by-link tokenisation.
It is still a draft process
The rulebook remains in development, and the decision on whether to issue the digital euro will only be considered once the EU legislative process has been completed.
Sources
Related reading
Scheme rulebook
The single set of rules, standards and procedures for digital euro payments. Version 0.91 was published in July 2026 and is explicitly a draft.
Acquiring PSP
An acquiring PSP serves business digital euro users — managing merchant accounts and the acceptance solutions through which businesses take payments.
Alias
An alias is a pseudonymous identifier — such as a phone number — standing in for a digital euro account, so you can be paid without revealing your DEAN.
BEAN
BEAN is the Basic Euro Account Number — positions 5 to 18 of a DEAN, the indicator digit plus the 13-digit serial.