A consortium of 37 European financial institutions is building a regulated euro stablecoin on the public Ethereum blockchain, confirmed Ethereum Institutional on September 8. The project operates under the brand Qivalis and is structured to comply with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, known as MiCA. A launch is targeted for the second half of 2026.
The consortium and its license
Qivalis brings together banks from 15 countries. The token is designed with a strict 1:1 peg to the euro, meaning each stablecoin in circulation should be matched by one euro held in reserve. Before any launch, the consortium needs an Electronic Money Institution license, an EMI, and that application is under review by De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank. Until the DNB grants authorization, Qivalis stays in a technical and legal pre-launch phase, and no tokens can legally be issued to the public under the MiCA framework.
The choice of a public blockchain matters. Ethereum offers deep liquidity, mature developer tooling and direct integration with decentralized finance applications. A bank-led project on a permissioned ledger would have been the conservative route. Going public instead exposes every transfer to anyone with a block explorer, which aligns with MiCA’s emphasis on reserve transparency and redemption rights, and it means the token can move between wallets, exchanges and DeFi protocols without the consortium approving each destination.
Why banks want a euro token
Dollar-pegged stablecoins dominate global circulation. USDT and USDC together account for the large majority of the roughly $150 billion stablecoin market, and they settle a growing share of cross-border payments and onchain trading around the clock. European banks have watched that volume from the sidelines, and a euro alternative is their answer. A regulated euro stablecoin lets member institutions settle between themselves and with corporate clients in near real time, on rails that run on weekends and holidays, while staying inside EU law.
The regulatory environment has pushed this from idea to execution. MiCA’s transitional grandfathering period expired on July 1, 2026, and every crypto-asset service provider in the bloc must now hold a license from a national regulator. That deadline turned stablecoin issuance from a legal gray area into a licensing exercise. Consortiums like Qivalis are the visible result, and the Netherlands has emerged as one of the more active approval venues, alongside France and Germany.
Competition in the euro token market
Qivalis will not be the first mover. Societe Generale’s SG-Forge has issued euro stablecoins under earlier French rules and migrated them into the MiCA regime, and several smaller fintech issuers hold or are seeking MiCA licenses for euro tokens. The differentiator for a 37-bank consortium is distribution. If member banks push the token into corporate treasury products, payment processing and interbank settlement, adoption could reach places that pure crypto issuers struggle to enter, where the buyer is a CFO rather than a trader.
Open questions remain before launch. The consortium has not published full reserve composition details, redemption fees or a confirmed launch date, all of which matter to corporate users deciding whether to hold the token at all. Interest on reserves is another sensitive point, since MiCA generally bars issuers from passing yield to token holders. Ethereum transaction fees, while trivial for large institutional transfers, still land on users in a way that internal bank rails do not, and some corporate clients will need education before they accept a public-chain settlement flow.
For crypto markets, the launch adds a well-capitalized, compliance-first euro token to a market that has been dollar-heavy since stablecoins first appeared. For banks, it is a test of whether regulated onchain money can win over treasurers who currently settle through SEPA. The DNB review is the gate to watch. Authorization, followed by a live token on Ethereum mainnet, would mark the largest bank consortium entry into public-chain payments in Europe to date.
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