Intro
A year ago, in the post Stablecoins, European Banks Are on the Move, we wrote about nine European banks, including UniCredit and Banca Sella. They were getting ready to launch a euro stablecoin together. The idea was to counter the dollar’s dominance with a MiCA-compliant token, expected in the second half of 2026.
Today that project has a name, Qivalis, and a license in its pocket. On October 14 the company announced that De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch central bank, had authorized it as an electronic money institution (Qivalis press release). Meanwhile, the number of banks has grown to 37, in 15 countries.
The token, however, isn’t here yet. Let’s see what changes, how it relates to the digital euro and whether savers will be able to use it too.
What Qivalis is and what it has obtained
Qivalis is an Amsterdam-based company led by Jan-Oliver Sell. Its shareholders include ING, BNP Paribas, BBVA, CaixaBank and DZ Bank. Four of them are Italian: founders UniCredit and Banca Sella have been joined by Intesa Sanpaolo and BPER Banca (Qivalis fact sheet). The ninth bank, which we didn’t name last year, was Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International.
An electronic money institution, or EMI, is a company authorized to issue electronic money, that is, a claim in euros on the issuer. It isn’t a bank and doesn’t take deposits. Under MiCA, only banks and EMIs can issue an e-money token (EMT), the stablecoin pegged to a single official currency (MiCA, Art. 48).
Before it can start, it still needs the white paper, the disclosure document required by MiCA. Qivalis talks of issuance “in the coming months,” with no date (CoinDesk). On its website it states that it does not currently issue electronic money or provide payment services to the public (Qivalis). Reserves will be full, one euro for every token. In September it emerged that it will start on the public Ethereum blockchain, but the technical details aren’t official yet (Stablecoin Insider).
Bank stablecoin or digital euro?
The two are often confused. The digital euro would be public money, issued by the ECB like banknotes, only in electronic form. The Qivalis token, on the other hand, is private money: a debt of a supervised company, backed by its reserves. The main differences:
- who issues it: the ECB in the first case, a private EMI in the second;
- what it’s for: the digital euro is aimed at everyday payments, offline too, with free basic services and a cap on holdings (European Parliament). Qivalis is aimed at on-chain settlement, business-to-business payments and tokenized assets;
- where it runs: Qivalis on public blockchains, with the option of connecting to DeFi. The digital euro, according to Sell, will most likely run on centralized infrastructure (Payment Expert);
- when: Qivalis in the coming months, the digital euro not before 2029.
In fact, the digital euro law is still under discussion. The EU Council set its position in December 2025, Parliament in July 2026, and final negotiations are now underway. If the text passes by year-end, the ECB aims for a first issuance in 2029, after a pilot starting in the second half of 2027 (ECB).
Rivals or complements? Sell speaks of “different layers of the same monetary system,” with different uses (Payment Expert). The ECB is cooler. In May, Christine Lagarde said she was skeptical about euro stablecoins (Reuters). If savings leave checking accounts and end up in tokens, she explains, banks lend less and monetary policy works less well (Lagarde’s speech).
The risk, according to Lagarde, is greater when the issuer isn’t a bank. And while Qivalis is indeed owned by banks, it is formally an EMI. Frankfurt prefers tokenized bank deposits, settled in central bank money through Pontes, the service the Eurosystem launched on September 21 (ECB).
Who will be able to use it: only banks or savers too?
In short: you won’t buy it from Qivalis, but you’ll quite likely be able to buy it. The company will follow a “B2B2X” model and won’t sell directly to individuals. It will distribute the token through banks, exchanges, payment service providers and market infrastructure operators (Qivalis press release). It will be up to them, if they choose, to bring it to end customers.
The announced uses are mainly institutional. In March, however, Sell said he was in talks with exchanges and market makers to list the token on regulated platforms from launch. In the future, he added, member banks could also distribute it directly (Payment Expert). So far, none of the four Italian banks has announced a service for its customers (SpazioCrypto).
Anyone who holds it, even through an exchange, will be protected by MiCA. They can ask for redemption at any time, at face value and with no fees (MiCA, Art. 49). In return, the token pays no interest, because MiCA prohibits it (Art. 50). One euro stays one euro: if you want a return, you have to look elsewhere.
Why the banks care about it
The main reason is the dollar. According to Lagarde, stablecoins are worth over $300 billion and almost 98% of them are pegged to the dollar. About 90% of the market is in the hands of just two issuers, Tether and Circle (Lagarde’s speech). We covered this in our post on USDT and USDC.
Euro stablecoins already exist, such as Circle’s EURC or Société Générale’s EURCV, but they remain small. A token backed by 37 large banks could take the sector to a whole new scale. There’s also an economic interest: according to Criptovaluta.it, the yield on the reserves would go to the banks in proportion to their stakes (Criptovaluta.it). “European money deserves European rules, on-chain too,” Sell said.
Plenty of unknowns remain, though: how many people will actually use it, which exchanges it will reach, how the ECB will react. A year ago we were writing about a project; today there’s a license. The white paper will tell us more, and we’ll cover it here.
This article is for information purposes only and is not financial advice.
