European officials are circulating a framework that would allow wholesale settlement to occur atomically across participating institutions, replacing batch netting for a defined class of transactions.

The proposal stops short of a retail digital euro. Instead it focuses on tokenised commercial bank deposits settling against central bank money, a design that supervisors view as less disruptive to existing balance sheets.

Banks contacted for this article said the timeline remains the key uncertainty. A pilot would not begin before the next legislative cycle, and several participants want clarity on finality rules before committing engineering resources.