The ECB received 54 expressions of interest after it put out a call for partners in April and has now settled on the Spanish lender and US tech giant, alongside Worldline, Nexi and EPI.

For its part, CaixaBank will focus on producing a prototype for P2P online payments using the digital euro. Over the next few months, it will develop a mobile app that simulates the steps individuals will need to transfer digital euros to their account and/or transfer digital euros to other individuals.

Worldline is responsible for developing the P2P offline payments use-case, while Nexi will work on in-store payments.