Qivalis: European banks’ bet on the crypto world

European banks’ response to the dominance of the dollar

Thirty-seven banks from fifteen European countries have joined the Qivalis consortium with the aim of developing a euro-denominated stablecoin compliant with the MiCAR regulation. The initiative is positioned within the institutional and corporate segment, with potential applications in payments, treasury, the settlement of tokenized instruments, and market infrastructures. The project is distinct from the ECB’s digital euro, which is mainly oriented toward the retail sphere, and aims to bring the euro into digital financial networks. The launch is expected in the second half of 2026.

The project

Qivalis was launched in September 2025, when nine major European banks announced their intention to establish a joint stablecoin issuer. In December of the same year, the initiative adopted the name Qivalis, established its headquarters in Amsterdam and welcomed BNP Paribas as its tenth founding member. In May 2026, a further twenty-five financial institutions joined the consortium, bringing total participation to thirty-seven banks across fifteen European countries.

The project enters a market still dominated by dollar-denominated stablecoins, often developed by global private operators and originally created outside the European banking system. Qivalis stands out in terms of both nature and positioning: it is not designed as a crypto-native product primarily aimed at exchange liquidity, but as a euro-denominated European banking infrastructure built within the regulatory perimeter of the Union.

Promoted by supervised institutions, Qivalis is designed to address the needs of banks, asset managers and corporate treasuries. In this segment, the central issue is not only reserve backing, now an expected feature of any regulated stablecoin, but the presence of a recognizable framework in terms of governance, supervision, transparency and redemption rights. Qivalis therefore seeks to position itself not as an external alternative to the banking system, but as a possible digital extension of European bank money.

Why it matters for Europe

Europe’s dependence on dollar-denominated payment infrastructures and digital instruments has now become a matter of financial autonomy. In crypto markets, the dollar is not only the main unit of account: it is also the dominant currency for liquidity, trade settlement, and the management of stablecoin issuers’ reserves. The absence of a sufficiently liquid, regulated, and market-integrated European alternative therefore limits the euro’s ability to oversee the new digital financial infrastructures.

Dollar-denominated stablecoins have helped reinforce this balance. A significant share of the liquidity raised by issuers is in fact invested in money market instruments and U.S. government securities, generating recurring demand for safe dollar-denominated assets. In this way, the use of stablecoins is not limited to crypto markets, but also supports the international role of the U.S. currency. An equivalent infrastructure in euros could produce a similar effect: extending the use of the single currency in global digital markets and, over time, supporting demand for euro-denominated liquid instruments.

Stablecoins are gradually taking on the role of a digital monetary component in crypto markets and, more broadly, in blockchain-based financial infrastructures. They are used to transfer liquidity between platforms, settle transactions in spot and derivatives instruments, manage collateral, access exchanges, execute cross-border payments, and reduce settlement times compared with traditional systems. If this monetary component remains denominated almost exclusively in dollars, a growing share of global digital liquidity risks consolidating around the U.S. currency, strengthening its role not only as a unit of account, but also as a means of settlement in new financial markets. In this sense, Qivalis is not merely a technological project, but an initiative with monetary, infrastructural, and geopolitical implications.

The scale of the consortium is also a relevant factor. In less than a year, membership has grown from nine to thirty-seven banks across fifteen European countries: a level of coordination that is far from obvious in a sector historically fragmented along national lines. This breadth could represent one of the project’s main competitive advantages. A stablecoin, in fact, does not establish itself solely on the basis of reserve quality or regulatory compliance, but through its ability to achieve liquidity, distribution, and integration within financial networks. The involvement of major European banks increases the likelihood that Qivalis will be able to capture institutional demand.

Italy’s role

Italy’s participation in the Qivalis consortium can be read in two ways. On the one hand, there are institutions that have already developed a recognizable position in the regulated crypto-asset sector. Banca Sella became the first Italian bank authorized to offer crypto services under MiCAR, following a multi-year process of technological and operational development. Intesa Sanpaolo, as early as 2023, launched a proprietary trading desk for crypto-assets, with exposure that now exceeds two hundred million euros. For these operators, joining Qivalis appears to be the natural continuation of a strategy already underway.

On the other hand, the presence of UniCredit and BPER Banca also signals a catch-up move by institutions that, at least on the crypto front, have proceeded more gradually. In this case, joining the consortium can be interpreted as a way to close the gap that had accumulated, by participating in a shared infrastructure rather than developing proprietary solutions internally. Qivalis offers a regulated and collective path to oversee an evolving market, reducing the risk of remaining on the margins of the future digital banking offering.

Italy’s relevance therefore lies not only in the number of banks involved, but also in the composition of the group. The consortium brings together institutions already active in the sector and operators seeking to accelerate their positioning, confirming that regulated crypto-assets are entering the strategic perimeter of the national banking system. If bank stablecoins were to find applications in corporate treasury, international payments, or the settlement of tokenized instruments, participation in Qivalis could become a competitive advantage in overseeing a new component of Europe’s financial offering.

The relationship with the digital euro

Qivalis and the ECB’s digital euro are not overlapping projects. The main distinction concerns their nature, target users, and infrastructure of use. The digital euro is central bank money designed mainly for the retail segment: citizens, merchants, and everyday payments. Qivalis, by contrast, is a regulated private digital currency intended for the institutional segment, with potential applications in interbank payments, treasury, the settlement of tokenized assets, and the settlement of crypto-asset transactions.

From this perspective, Qivalis addresses a need that is closer to financial markets than to retail payments. It offers a euro-denominated instrument, issued by banking entities and potentially interoperable with blockchain infrastructures, without depending on the development timeline of the ECB’s digital euro. Moreover, the digital euro is not designed to operate directly in crypto markets or to integrate with public blockchains. In the medium term, the most plausible scenario is therefore coexistence among central bank digital money, bank deposits, electronic money, and regulated stablecoins, each with distinct functions and scopes of use.

The most relevant use case, looking ahead, is the settlement of tokenized financial instruments. If bonds, funds, or other assets are represented on blockchain, it will also be necessary to have a digital monetary component with which to settle transactions. The tokenization of a security produces limited benefits if the fiat component remains anchored to traditional infrastructures. A euro-denominated bank stablecoin could therefore become the monetary leg of these markets, enabling faster, programmable exchanges that could potentially operate outside the conventional time windows of payment systems.

Rather than an alternative to the digital euro, Qivalis therefore appears as a bridging infrastructure between the European banking system and digital financial markets. Its potential value lies in its ability to bring the euro into the blockchain economy in a form compatible with the operational, regulatory, and prudential needs of supervised operators.

Risks and conditions for success

The ambition of the project does not eliminate its critical issues. The main one concerns the ability to turn regulatory compliance into actual adoption. The dominant stablecoins have not prevailed solely for technical reasons, but because they have become operational standards among exchanges, market makers, OTC desks, institutional intermediaries, and crypto infrastructures. Qivalis will therefore need to build liquidity, market depth, and recurring use cases rapidly; otherwise, it risks remaining a robust instrument from a regulatory standpoint, but marginal in practice.

The second factor concerns integration into existing financial flows. To be relevant, a euro-denominated bank stablecoin will need to interact with blockchain infrastructures, custody services, payment systems, anti-money laundering procedures, and the operational architectures of supervised intermediaries. Regulation can facilitate the entry of institutional operators, but it cannot replace ease of use: in digital markets, interoperability, operational continuity, and the ability to fit seamlessly into treasury, trading, and settlement processes are crucial.

Finally, there remains the issue of balance with the traditional monetary system. A euro-denominated bank stablecoin can strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy, but its growth will need to be compatible with financial stability, the transmission of monetary policy, and the structure of bank funding. Qivalis’s advantage is that it is being created within a supervised perimeter; the challenge will be to demonstrate that this perimeter does not limit its scalability, but instead becomes its main source of credibility.

Conclusions

Qivalis represents one of Europe’s most advanced initiatives in the field of regulated private digital currencies and one of the most significant operations promoted by the banking sector in the crypto-asset market. Its importance does not depend only on its technological ambition, but on the strategic meaning of the initiative: thirty-seven European financial institutions have chosen to collaborate in building a shared infrastructure for digital money.

For Italy, the presence of four national institutions in the consortium is a significant signal. It indicates that a substantial part of the domestic banking system no longer views the digital transformation of money and payments as an experimental issue, but as a strategic direction to be actively overseen.

What is at stake is Europe’s ability to maintain an active role in defining the financial infrastructures of the future. Qivalis is one of the most concrete attempts in this direction: not a replica of U.S. models, nor a substitute for the digital euro, but a European banking path toward private, regulated digital money integrated with financial markets.