When nine of Europe’s major banks began meeting behind closed doors three years ago, few inside the industry understood what was taking shape. The institutions—spanning from the Netherlands to Italy, from Belgium to the Nordics—had collectively spent nearly a decade experimenting with blockchain technology. But those experiments, scattered across trade finance pilots, collateral projects, and innovation sandboxes, had produced little that an ordinary corporate client could actually use.
Inside ING’s wholesale division, Floris Lugt and Jan Lebbe were watching the same problem unfold. Assets were being tokenized. Treasury departments were exploring 24/7 liquidity. Fintechs were building programmable payment flows. Yet one critical ingredient remained stuck in the past: the euro itself, trapped in legacy rails and unable to move with the same speed, interoperability, and composability as the assets it was meant to settle.
Joining Forces
What began at ING as an internal assessment of its digital asset strategy soon turned into a broader realization: no single bank could solve this alone. Tokenized deposits looked promising but were complex to scale across institutions. A digital euro from the European Central Bank, while conceptually powerful, remained years away and unlikely to launch on public blockchains. Meanwhile, privately issued stablecoins were growing fast—largely denominated in U.S. dollars.
Europe, they feared, risked becoming a digital money passenger.
And so the banks did something uncharacteristic for a traditionally cautious sector: they aligned. Over the course of workshops, technical deep dives and board-level debates, they concluded that Europe needed a bank-issued, jointly governed euro stablecoin—one designed not for speculation, but for the practical, often unglamorous tasks of modern finance: instant cross-border settlement, programmable payouts, tokenized securities delivery-versus-payment, and the emerging liquidity demands of 24/7 digital markets.
Stablecoin as a neutral payment layer
The result is one of the most significant cooperative projects the sector has attempted in a decade: a shared e-money institution, based in the Netherlands and supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank, dedicated solely to issuing a fully backed, MiCAR-compliant euro stablecoin. The issuer will not compete with its shareholders. It will not build retail apps or chase consumers with sleek wallets. Its only mission is to make euros usable on-chain—securely, transparently, and under regulatory scrutiny.
Banks, fintechs and regulated crypto providers will handle the rest.
In conversations on the BFRR podcast, Lugt and Lebbe describe a future where this stablecoin becomes a neutral payment layer across multiple blockchains—public or permissioned—depending on client needs. Privacy-preserving technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs may play a decisive role in whether public chains can meet banking-grade requirements. Permissioned networks will continue to matter for interbank settlement. The stablecoin, they insist, is agnostic; it will go where the demand is.
Not a replacement for Europe’s payment system
What they do not foresee is a replacement of Europe’s existing payment system. SEPA will continue to carry supermarket transactions and everyday transfers. The new instrument is meant for the use cases today’s rails cannot reach: automated escrow, composable trade finance, near-instant cross-currency flows, and the settlement of digital assets that move at the speed of code rather than the rhythm of banking hours.
By 2030, they predict, stablecoins, tokenized deposits and CBDCs will coexist—a pluralistic monetary environment in which clients choose the format best suited to their purpose. And while the stablecoin itself may eventually fade into the background, living inside corporate workflows and automated treasury functions, its impact could be profound: a European financial system that finally speaks the language of the digital economy.
For now, the initiative’s name remains undisclosed. But by year’s end, the banks promise, Europe will learn what to call the project that aims to redefine its role in the future of money.
Press release on the joint stablecoin project
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