How 21 Global Banks Plan to Reshape the Stablecoin Market
Twenty-one major financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Santander, have committed to form a new company to issue a bank-backed stablecoin, turning an exploratory project announced last year into a planned commercial venture.
Summary:
- Twenty-one financial institutions will establish a new stablecoin company in H2 2026.
- The first token will be USD-denominated, with a euro version prioritized later.
- Many participants already operate blockchain, tokenization or digital-asset businesses.
- BBVA is also part of Qivalis, a separate European bank-led stablecoin project.
The group expects to establish the company in the second half of 2026 and bring its first U.S. dollar-denominated token to market in the first half of 2027.
Beyond the sheer milestone of large banks entering the stablecoin market, the project carries much broader implications. Many of the participants already use blockchain for tokenized deposits, securities, custody or settlement. The new venture adds a shared form of digital money that could circulate between institutions and on public blockchains, rather than remaining inside one bank’s proprietary network.
The consortium has doubled in size
The initiative began in October 2025 with ten banks exploring a 1:1 reserve-backed form of digital money.
It has now expanded to 21 institutions across five regions:
- North America: Bank of America, Capital One, Citi, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, PNC Financial Services, Scotiabank, TD Bank Group, Wells Fargo and WisdomTree.
- Europe: Santander, BBVA, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank and UBS.
- East Asia: MUFG Bank.
- Middle East: Sirius International Holding.
- Africa: Standard Bank.
The consortium says the token could be used across wholesale, institutional and retail markets, including cross-border payments and settlement of digital assets.
It intends to comply with the U.S. GENIUS Act and the EU’s MiCA framework where applicable. After the initial dollar token, the group wants to add stablecoins linked to other G7 currencies, with the euro identified as the next priority.
What the banks already have in common
This is not the first blockchain project for many of the participants.
Several have already spent years building infrastructure intended to move cash or securities onchain.
Citi provides perhaps the clearest example. Its Citi Token Services platform already allows participating institutional clients to move tokenized bank deposits on a private permissioned blockchain. In July, Siam Commercial Bank became the first financial-institution client to go live with Citi’s combined tokenized-deposit and 24/7 USD clearing service.
Goldman Sachs has developed its own institutional blockchain infrastructure. In 2025, BNY began using Goldman Sachs’ GS DAP technology to maintain tokenized records of ownership in selected money-market funds.
UBS operates UBS Tokenize, covering tokenized bonds, funds and structured products, while Santander’s experiments go back at least to its $20 million end-to-end blockchain bond issued on Ethereum in 2019.
The new stablecoin is therefore not replacing these projects. It adds another layer to them.
Stablecoins solve a different problem from tokenized deposits
That distinction explains why banks that already have blockchain-based payment products still want a stablecoin.
A tokenized deposit remains a commercial-bank liability. If a Citi client uses Citi Token Services, the digital representation still corresponds to money deposited with Citi and operates within Citi’s banking framework.
A reserve-backed stablecoin has a different architecture. It can potentially move between wallets, institutions and blockchain applications without every holder maintaining an account at the issuing bank.
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For banks, that difference matters when digital assets from multiple institutions need a common settlement asset.
A Citi deposit token works well inside Citi’s network. A jointly issued stablecoin could be accepted across a much broader group of counterparties.
That gives the consortium a practical reason to collaborate even though its members compete in traditional banking.
BBVA is backing two competing stablecoin models
One member makes that shift particularly visible.
BBVA is also part of Qivalis, the European bank consortium developing a euro-denominated stablecoin. BBVA joined Qivalis in February, saying the project was intended to support faster payments and digital-asset settlement in a regulated European framework.
Qivalis has since expanded rapidly. Reuters reported in May that it had reached 37 financial institutions across 15 countries after adding 25 new members.
Reuters also confirmed BBVA’s participation in both the Qivalis project and the newly announced 21-member consortium.
The overlap is revealing.
BBVA is not betting that one stablecoin network will necessarily dominate. It is positioning itself inside two potential settlement systems with different starting currencies and geographic centers.
The strategies currently look like this:
- New 21-member venture: global ambitions, USD first, EUR later, public-blockchain distribution.
- Qivalis: European banking coalition, EUR first, MiCA-centered framework.
- Individual bank projects: tokenized deposits and proprietary settlement networks that remain useful for customers already inside a bank’s ecosystem.
Those models can coexist because they solve related but not identical problems.
Why banks are changing their stance on stablecoins
Banks historically had a reason to prefer tokenized deposits.
Deposits are a core source of bank funding. If customers move large balances into third-party stablecoins, those deposits can leave the banking system and shift toward stablecoin reserve assets instead.
That helps explain why the sector previously put more emphasis on digitizing existing deposits rather than replacing them with circulating tokens.
The competitive landscape has changed.
Tether now has more than $180 billion of dollar-pegged tokens outstanding, while stablecoins increasingly serve as settlement assets for crypto trading, payments and tokenized securities.
Banks which had previously favored tokenized deposits are now reconsidering stablecoins as the market grows and non-bank companies move deeper into digital payments.
The choice increasingly becomes less about whether banks want stablecoins and more about whether they are willing to let someone else provide the money used inside tokenized markets.
A shared token could become the cash leg of tokenization
The banks’ existing projects help explain the commercial logic.
Tokenizing a bond, fund or private-market security solves only one side of a transaction. The buyer still needs a way to deliver cash.
If the asset can settle instantly on a blockchain but the money leg must pass through traditional banking cut-off times and several intermediaries, much of the efficiency disappears.
That is why the consortium specifically highlights digital-asset settlement alongside payments.
A widely accepted bank-backed stablecoin could provide an onchain cash leg for tokenized securities while moving between institutions outside normal settlement windows.
Citi has already described this mismatch as an “always-on divide” between blockchain-based assets and legacy financial infrastructure. Its own response has been tokenized deposits and 24/7 clearing.
The consortium is testing whether the same problem also requires shared public-blockchain money.
The banks still face a distribution problem
Creating a compliant stablecoin does not guarantee that anyone will use it.
Existing stablecoin liquidity is highly concentrated around established tokens. Exchanges, market makers, wallets, DeFi protocols and trading firms already hold and price much of their activity in incumbent dollar stablecoins.
A new bank-backed token therefore has to build more than reserves and regulatory approval. It needs liquidity, exchange integrations, wallet support and counterparties willing to hold it.
The experience of Societe Generale illustrates the difficulty. Reuters reported that its euro stablecoin had only about €105.6 million in circulation despite launching years earlier.
The 21-member venture has one advantage: distribution is built into the shareholder group itself.
Its members collectively serve retail customers, asset managers, corporations, traders and financial institutions across major markets.
That network could give the stablecoin immediate routes into payment and settlement flows that crypto-native issuers had to build gradually.
The real competition is over onchain money
There is already disagreement over which digital-money model should dominate.
BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos argued last week that tokenized deposits are better suited than stablecoins for large-scale payments, citing concerns around interoperability, bank funding, monetary sovereignty and financial crime. He nevertheless acknowledged that the two forms could coexist.
Banks increasingly appear to be preparing for exactly that outcome.
Citi can keep tokenizing deposits. UBS can tokenize securities. Goldman Sachs can supply capital-market infrastructure. BBVA can participate in a euro consortium. The same institutions can still support a shared stablecoin when assets need money that travels across organizational boundaries.
The unanswered question is therefore not whether these banks have another crypto project. Most of the major participants already do.
What changes with this venture is the level of coordination. Instead of each institution building only its own blockchain rail, 21 firms are trying to create a common digital liability that other banks, investors and blockchain markets can recognize.
By 2027, the more useful measure of success will not be the number of institutions behind the token. It will be whether they actually use it to settle the tokenized bonds, funds, payments and other digital assets they have spent years building.
The information presented in this article is intended for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as financial, investment, or trading advice. Coinspress.com does not promote or advocate for any particular investment strategy, asset, or cryptocurrency project. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile and unpredictable – always perform your own research and seek guidance from a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
