Spain's Sabadell and Bankinter Set to Join Euro Stablecoin Consortium Qivalis
Spanish lenders deepen the bloc's dominance in Europe's largest bank-backed euro stablecoin project to date, ahead of a planned H2 2026 launch.
Two listed Spanish banks, Banco Sabadell and Bankinter, are preparing to join Qivalis, the Amsterdam-based banking consortium building a regulated euro stablecoin, according to Spanish financial newspaper Expansión, confirmed by Reuters on May 5, 2026. Three non-listed Spanish institutions are also set to sign on: regional lender Abanca, savings bank Kutxabank, and Cecabank, which operates Spain's interbank clearing and settlement infrastructure. A formal announcement is expected within weeks, as the consortium finalises its expanded roster ahead of a second-half 2026 token launch.
Spain Takes the Lead
The additions would make Spain the most represented single country within Qivalis, which currently counts 12 member banks across eight countries. Spain already holds two seats in the consortium: BBVA and CaixaBank, the Valencia-headquartered lender that was among the first institutions to publicly confirm the project.
The broader Spanish bloc would now include Sabadell, Bankinter, Abanca, Kutxabank, and Cecabank alongside BBVA and CaixaBank, giving the Iberian market seven institutions and an outsized stake in the project's governance and distribution reach.
Other current members include BNP Paribas, ING, UniCredit, Danske Bank, DekaBank, DZ BANK, KBC, Raiffeisen Bank International, SEB, and Banca Sella.
Qivalis is incorporated as a joint venture under Dutch law, registered with the Dutch Trade Register, and is seeking authorisation as an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) from De Nederlandsche Bank. The token will be 1:1 backed by the euro, with at least 40 percent of reserves held in bank deposits and the remainder in short-term eurozone sovereign bonds diversified across EU member states.
Token holders will have access to 24-hour, seven-day redemption.
Infrastructure and Regulatory Fit
In April 2026, Qivalis confirmed Fireblocks as its core infrastructure partner. The custody and tokenisation firm will provide the token issuance engine using the ERC-20F standard, a less widely adopted variant of the more common ERC-20 token format used across Ethereum-compatible networks.
Fireblocks also supplies treasury management tools, multi-institution access controls, and built-in compliance screening covering anti-money laundering, sanctions, and fraud monitoring.
The launch timeline is not accidental. The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), the legal framework governing stablecoin issuers in Europe, enters full effect in July 2026. Qivalis is positioning its token as among the first fully MiCA-compliant euro stablecoins issued by a major banking consortium.
The ECB's own digital euro, a central bank-issued alternative, is not expected before mid-2029, which leaves a substantial window for bank-issued products to establish market share. That gap has drawn pointed commentary from European monetary authorities: Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, has called for limits on non-euro stablecoins in everyday payments, citing financial stability risks. His position reinforces why a consortium of regulated European banks is moving now to establish a domestically governed alternative.
Qivalis CEO Jan-Oliver Sell, formerly managing director at Coinbase Germany, framed the broader stakes in April 2026: "A native euro stablecoin isn't just about convenience, it's about monetary autonomy in the digital age."
The project's supervisory board is chaired by Sir Howard Davies, former Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority and former Chair of Royal Bank of Scotland. His presence on the board is a meaningful signal of institutional credibility for a project whose commercial success depends heavily on regulatory acceptance. Floris Lugt serves as CFO.
On the Fireblocks partnership, Sell said: "Europe needs a regulated euro-backed stablecoin option backed by trusted financial institutions. Fireblocks' platform gives us the security, compliance controls, and operational infrastructure to deliver exactly that."
A Thin Market Getting Some Competition
The numbers underscore how much ground a euro stablecoin has to make up. Euro-pegged stablecoins held roughly 650 million dollars in total supply as of early 2026, against a global stablecoin market capitalisation of approximately 320 billion dollars by April. Dollar-denominated tokens account for around 99 percent of that supply. Total stablecoin transaction volume reached 33 trillion dollars in 2025, up 75 percent year on year, and dollar-denominated tokens, including USDT and USDC, accounted for the overwhelming majority of that activity.
Qivalis is already in advanced talks with crypto exchanges, market makers, and liquidity providers to secure listings at launch.
Spanish exchange Bit2Me has publicly acknowledged being in discussions with at least one consortium member bank.
Why Cecabank's Inclusion Matters
For readers outside Western Europe, the most structurally significant detail may be Cecabank's participation. Cecabank is not a consumer bank. It is the interbank clearing and settlement infrastructure operator and custodian for Spain's savings bank sector. Cecabank previously participated alongside Abanca in the Bank of Spain's CBDC pilot conducted with Adhara Blockchain, giving it direct experience with tokenised settlement infrastructure under regulatory supervision. That precedent makes its inclusion structurally meaningful rather than incidental.
Its inclusion suggests Qivalis infrastructure could eventually be extended to smaller regional institutions, making the token accessible to a much broader set of financial intermediaries than the headline bank names imply.
For businesses in South Asia and North and West Africa that trade with European partners, this matters in practical terms. Euro-denominated cross-border settlement currently requires routing through dollar proxies, adding currency conversion costs and counterparty risk. A liquid, regulated euro stablecoin on established infrastructure could reduce that friction, particularly in trade corridors connecting India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Morocco to EU markets. Spain hosts significant diaspora communities from Morocco, Senegal, and Pakistan, making the Spanish banks' participation directly relevant to remittance flows and not only to commercial trade. Pakistan launched a regulatory sandbox for stablecoin remittances in Q4 2025, and India's Reserve Bank has signalled growing openness to regulated private digital money, shifting the policy environment on the receiving side as well. Traditional remittance and trade settlement in these corridors carries fees of 8 to 10 percent or more per transaction; stablecoin transfers have demonstrated costs below 1 percent in comparable corridors.
What Comes Next
With the official Spanish expansion announcement expected in the coming weeks and a launch window tied to the MiCA compliance deadline, Qivalis is on track to be among the more consequential developments in European digital finance this year. The project surfaced in late 2025 with nine founding members and has since grown to 12.
The project's success will depend on exchange liquidity at launch, regulatory authorisation from Dutch supervisors, and whether the broader market has appetite for a euro-denominated alternative to the entrenched dollar stablecoins. Developers building on euro payment rails should note that the ERC-20F standard requires specific compatibility considerations, and Qivalis has cautioned publicly against interacting with any smart contracts not officially deployed by the venture.