BBVA, ING, BNP Paribas and nine other lenders plan to issue a regulated euro stablecoin in H2 2026, backed by bank deposits and sovereign bonds, in the banking sector's most coordinated response to dollar-dominated crypto payments.
Twelve of Europe's largest banks have formed a consortium called Qivalis to issue a euro-pegged stablecoin in the second half of 2026, creating the banking sector's most coordinated challenge yet to the dollar-denominated tokens that dominate cryptocurrency payments and settlement.
The consortium includes BBVA, Banca Sella, BNP Paribas, CaixaBank, Danske Bank, DekaBank, DZ BANK, ING, KBC, Raiffeisen Bank International, SEB and UniCredit. BBVA joined in early February after shelving its own independent euro stablecoin project in favour of the collective effort, according to a statement from the Spanish lender.
The token will be pegged one-to-one to the euro, with at least 40 percent of reserves held in deposits at participating banks and the remainder invested in high-quality, short-term eurozone sovereign bonds. That reserve structure mirrors the prudential requirements set out in the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, known as MiCA, which established licensing, capital, governance and transparency standards for stablecoin issuers operating in the bloc.
The Dutch central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank, will issue the electronic money institution licence under which the token will operate. Qivalis has applied for authorisation and expects a decision before the planned launch window, according to people familiar with the matter. The choice of a Dutch licence reflects the Netherlands' relatively advanced digital-asset regulatory infrastructure and DNB's experience supervising crypto service providers since 2020.
Dollar-pegged stablecoins currently account for more than 95 percent of the $317 billion stablecoin market by supply. Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC together represent roughly $280 billion of that total. Euro-denominated stablecoins, by contrast, hold less than $5 billion in circulation despite the eurozone's $14 trillion economy, a gap that Qivalis aims to narrow.
Qivalis has begun discussions with cryptocurrency exchanges to secure trading pairs and liquidity at launch, CoinDesk reported in March. The consortium is prioritising exchange partners that comply with MiCA's requirements for crypto-asset service providers, which took full effect in December 2024 after a phased implementation that began earlier that year.
The project represents a reversal of the European banking sector's historically cautious stance toward blockchain-based payments. As recently as 2023, most large European lenders viewed stablecoins as a competitive threat rather than a product category they might enter. The shift reflects both the commercial success of dollar stablecoins — Tether alone generated more than $13 billion in revenue in 2025 — and the regulatory clarity provided by MiCA, which gave banks a compliance pathway that did not previously exist.
Analysts at Deutsche Bank, which is not part of the consortium, estimated in a January research note that a bank-issued euro stablecoin could capture between 5 and 15 percent of euro-area cross-border payment flows within three years of launch, depending on merchant adoption and exchange liquidity. That would represent between $400 billion and $1.2 trillion in annual transaction volume.
The Qivalis effort is not the only European stablecoin initiative. Societe Generale's digital-asset subsidiary, SG-FORGE, launched its EUR CoinVertible token in 2023 and has gradually expanded its distribution. But SG-FORGE operates as a single-issuer token, whereas Qivalis is designed as a multi-bank issuance platform in which each participating lender contributes to and benefits from the shared reserve pool.
The European Central Bank has observed the consortium's development without publicly endorsing or opposing it. The ECB is separately advancing its digital euro project, which completed a preparation phase in late 2025 and is now recruiting technical experts to integrate the central bank digital currency into ATMs and card payment terminals. ECB officials have said the digital euro and private stablecoins can coexist, though the central bank has reserved the right to impose holding limits on private tokens if they threaten monetary sovereignty.
Circle, the issuer of USDC, expanded its European operations in 2025 after obtaining a MiCA-compliant e-money licence in France. The company has argued that a vibrant euro stablecoin market benefits all issuers by increasing overall adoption of on-chain payments.
Qivalis plans to publish a technical whitepaper detailing its blockchain infrastructure and smart-contract architecture before the end of the second quarter. The consortium has not disclosed which blockchain or blockchains the token will initially launch on.
