The Spanish Central Bank has authorized the fintech company Monei to issue its digital euro. This is a project developed within the financial sandbox that begins its pilot test today and aims to be the prototype of the digital euro that the European Central Bank (ECB) is planning. The test phase will be closed to a small group of people to test the application. At the moment, it will be available only for operations within Spain. To obtain the digital euros, the user must enter their phone number, verify their identity via video identification and load the wallet with real euros via Bizum. The company specifies that there will always be the same number of digital euros as the real euros that support them. After the test phase, reports will be prepared and, once the information is collected, the Spanish Central Bank will decide whether to authorize Monei to open the service to the public. Although these digital euros will not be issued by the ECB, the company's intention is that they serve as an initial project and can be extended to other European countries.
ref. https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2023/01/17/companias/1673981828_456113.html
