Overview
- DEAN, short for Digital Euro Access Number, is a new account identifier proposed to uniquely identify and route payments between digital-euro accounts.
- Draft specifications reported in coverage describe an 18-character alphanumeric DEAN that starts with “EU” and includes an indicator for private or business use.
- DEANs would be issued centrally by the Digital Euro Service Platform after a user completes onboarding with a payment service provider, which must then assign the DEAN to the user’s digital-euro account.
- The system is designed so users can pay by simple aliases such as a phone number or email while the platform uses anonymized internal identifiers to limit direct exposure of personal data.
- The digital euro and DEAN remain in pilot testing and are framed as a complement to cash, with wider public tests and final regulatory decisions still required before general rollout.