Berlin Group

The Berlin Group is a pan-European payment-industry initiative focused on open-banking standards, best known for its NextGenPSD2 framework, which defines API specifications that allow third-party payment-service providers and fintechs to access bank accounts under the EU's revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2). Its membership covers European banks, payment processors and fintech associations working toward a common technical foundation for account-to-account payments, data access and Open Finance.

On 24 April 2026 the Berlin Group signed a technical standards agreement with the ECB alongside ECPC and nexo standards, contributing its open-banking API specifications as a reference framework for Digital Euro infrastructure. The Digital Euro involves not just card-payment terminals but also account-based access flows, where Open Finance standards defining how payment-service providers connect to a central-bank ledger entry point are directly relevant. The Berlin Group's NextGenPSD2 work covers precisely this layer.

The group's significance for Digital Euro sovereignty is at the account-access layer: if the ECB's Digital Euro distribution goes through licensed payment-service providers (the banks and fintechs that will distribute digital euros to end users), those providers need standardised API connections to the ECB ledger. Berlin Group specifications are the European-governed alternative to building those connections on proprietary US-tech-stack APIs. The April agreement formalises their role in that infrastructure.