CRYPTO
Twenty-One Banks Are Building a Stablecoin to Compete With Tether and Circle by 2027
A consortium that stood at ten members less than a year ago has roughly doubled in size and set a concrete launch target, the clearest sign yet that traditional banks are taking GENIUS Act compliant stablecoins seriously as a competitive threat to existing issuers.
FinancialMarkets.com
A consortium of banks that included ten members as of an October 2025 disclosure has grown to roughly 21, and the group has committed to forming a new company in the second half of 2026 to issue a dollar-pegged stablecoin, with a euro-denominated version to follow, targeting a market debut in the first half of 2027. Banks confirmed to be involved include Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, TD Bank Group, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, MUFG Bank and Standard Bank, with the group stating an intent to comply with both the GENIUS Act in the United States and MiCA in Europe.
The stablecoin is intended for wholesale, institutional and retail use, including cross-border payments and digital-asset settlement. The specific token structure, its host blockchain and its reserve custodian have not yet been decided.
Roughly doubling in membership in under a year, with a concrete 2027 target attached, is a more serious signal than the vaguer bank interest in stablecoins that has circulated for the past two years. If the consortium launches on schedule, it would represent the most direct challenge yet from traditional banking to Tether's and Circle's dominance of dollar-denominated stablecoin issuance, and a data point for how seriously large banks are treating digital-dollar infrastructure as core business rather than experimentation.