The European Central Bank (ECB) has selected Almaviva and Fabrick to develop the mobile app for the proposed digital euro. The two Italian fintechs have been awarded a temporary joint venture contract, worth approximately €153 million, to create the digital currency platform that would allow European citizens to make payments in physical stores, online, and person-to-person transfers.
Almaviva and Fabrick will also be responsible for developing the app’s supporting infrastructure, including software development kits (SDKs) and APIs that would also allow European payment service providers to integrate existing services with the platform.
The initial four-year contract includes the possibility of extension up to 10 years. The first two years are allocated for “the gradual rollout of various use cases”, according to a joint statement. In the following two years, “development will be completed and a stable operational phase ensured”.
Based in Rome, Almaviva is a digital innovation group specialising in software development, system integration, and digital infrastructure projects. Fabrick is the open finance and banking technology subsidiary of Italy’s Sella Group, and develops platforms and APIs that enable financial institutions to integrate and offer digital financial services.
No final decision has been made by the ECB to launch a digital euro, and the project, which has been underway since 2020, remains in a dedicated development phase. If issued, the currency would be backed by the Eurosystem and is intended to complement physical cash, rather than replace it.
Alongside Almaviva and Fabrick, the ECB has also selected Feedzai for fraud and risk management, Giesecke+Devrient for offline payment solutions, EquensWorldline for secure information exchange, and Sapient for alias look-up services for the digital euro project.
Other partners involved in the project include UK blockchain software firm Fluency, which was enlisted in May to test offline and programmable functionality with its Aureum platform, while Diebold Nixdorf also joined the mix in August, lining up its Vynamic Transaction Middleware payments processing solution to integrate with digital euro interfaces.
Source: https://www.fintechfutures.com/
