ECB Seeks Firms to Explore AI Agent Payments for Digital Euro

The ECB's interest in agent-initiated payments signals that machine-to-machine commerce is moving from crypto-native experiments into central bank planning, which matters because settlement infrastructure, not the agents themselves, tends to determine what actually scales. The timing is notable: this exploration sits ahead of a pilot still two years out, suggesting the ECB wants design input before committing to a framework. The open question is whether autonomous payment agents get treated as a distinct category requiring new rules, or folded into existing retail payment oversight — and which firms end up shaping that answer.