Twenty-five banks joined Qivalis’s planned euro stablecoin network

Qivalis announced on May 20, 2026 that 25 additional banks had joined its proposed euro-denominated stablecoin consortium, increasing membership to 37 financial institutions across 15 European countries. The expansion turned an initiative formed by a smaller group of banks into a broad attempt to build shared, regulated infrastructure for euro payments and settlement on blockchain networks.

The new members included ABN AMRO, AIB, Banco Sabadell, Bank of Ireland, Bank Pekao, Bankinter, BPER, Erste Group, Intesa Sanpaolo, National Bank of Greece, Nordea, Rabobank and Swedbank, among others. Direct announcements from National Bank of Greece, Nordea and Banco Sabadell independently confirmed their participation.

The development was consequential because it represented coordinated institutional commitment rather than a single bank’s pilot. It did not, however, mean that a Qivalis token was operating on May 20, 2026.

What the banks committed to

Qivalis said it planned a token denominated in euros and backed on a one-for-one basis with euro assets. The consortium described possible uses including cross-border payments, around-the-clock liquidity management and settlement of tokenized financial instruments.

Those uses were objectives, not verified production capabilities. National Bank of Greece described Qivalis as an Amsterdam-based company pursuing authorization from De Nederlandsche Bank as an electronic money institution. The bank said the project aimed to launch an electronic money token during the second half of 2026. Nordea likewise described a future instrument and said the participating banks owned and governed the consortium.

Qivalis reported 37 members after adding 25. The subtraction indicates that the consortium had 12 members immediately before the May 20 announcement; that figure is a calculation from the two disclosed totals, not a separate membership count supplied by a regulator.

Why MiCA status mattered

Under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, a euro-referencing stablecoin generally falls within the category of an electronic money token. Article 48 requires an issuer offering such a token publicly in the European Union to be authorized as a credit institution or electronic money institution. Article 49 requires issuance and redemption at par value and gives holders a claim against the issuer.

That legal framework made Qivalis materially different from an informal token proposal, but the distinction between intended compliance and completed authorization remained essential. On May 20, Qivalis said it was pursuing Dutch authorization. The announcement did not establish that De Nederlandsche Bank had approved the company, that a regulatory white paper had been notified, or that reserves had been funded.

The proposed one-for-one backing was also a design commitment. No circulating Qivalis token, reserve report, redemption history or market-price record was identified for May 20 because issuance was still planned for a later period.

Institutional significance and limits

The membership expansion showed that a substantial group of European banks wanted a role in blockchain-based euro settlement. Their joint structure could provide distribution relationships and governance capacity that a standalone issuer would need to build separately. It also reflected concern that euro-denominated infrastructure should remain usable if tokenized securities and continuous settlement gained wider institutional adoption.

Membership alone did not prove customer demand, interoperability, lower transaction costs or adoption by trading venues. Nor did it resolve which blockchain networks, custodians, reserve arrangements or distribution channels would be used. Qivalis said tokens would be distributed through licensed partners, including shareholder banks, but the May 20 records did not provide a final technical architecture.

The next verifiable milestones after May 20, 2026 were therefore regulatory authorization, publication of the required disclosures, confirmed issuance terms, reserve and redemption arrangements, and an actual production launch. Until those steps occurred, Qivalis was best understood as a large bank-backed infrastructure project rather than an operating stablecoin.