The Bank of Spain has given fintech Monei the go-ahead to begin a pilot of ‘digital euros’ and start issuing the digital Euro token EURM.
This testing phase will be closed to a small group of people and is currently only available for operations within Spain.
The project, beginning on January 18th and set to last for up to twelve months, aims to be the first phase of the digital euro that the European Central Bank (ECB) is designing, reported Spanish newspaper Cinco Dias
To get the digital euros, the user has to enter their phone number, process their identity by video identification, and load the wallet with real euros through Bizum, a popular instant mobile payment platform in the country.
The application automatically creates the same value in digital euros and can send these to other individuals or registered companies while the money will be kept in two safeguard accounts and can be exchanged for physical euros at any time.
After the testing phase, the Bank of Spain will make a decision on whether to authorise Monei and open the service to the general public.
According to the report these digital euros will not be those issued by the ECB, athough the company intends for it to serve as an initial project, which be extended to other European countries.
As the first in Europe to put this kind of project into operation, Álex Saiz Verdaguer, CEO and founder of Monei, confirmed that the project could also be a pilot test for the ECB.
“At the moment, the Bank of Spain has decided that there will be a private entity that will lead it. It could be a pilot test for the ECB. The Bank of Spain has been the fastest and most innovative, and it may sit down with the ECB and say that we have the product, that it is regulated and supervised and from there it will be shaped,” he explained.
