Qivalis is heading toward launch.
The Amsterdam-based venture is working through its application for an e-money licence with the Dutch central bank, with a commercial launch targeted for the second half of this year.
When it goes live, it won’t be a single fintech issuing a token and asking the market to trust it. It will be a euro-denominated stablecoin backed by a consortium of regulated banks, including two IBOS members, Raiffeisen Bank International and KBC, operating under direct central bank supervision. A group of banks choosing to build shared infrastructure together, rather than compete on who launches first, is worth paying attention to.
A consortium answer to a single-issuer question
The group behind Qivalis wasn’t trying to out-run the fastest stablecoin issuers on speed. It was answering a harder question: what happens to trust in a digital euro instrument when it isn’t backed by one company’s balance sheet, but by a group of banks already subject to prudential regulation and central bank oversight.
We’ve raised that question twice this year. Our May article argued that tokenised settlement rails don’t remove the need for a governance layer behind them, they make it more important. Our July piece looked at what correspondent banking’s contraction shows about the cost of treating faster rails as a replacement for coordinated oversight, rather than an addition to it. Qivalis is that argument built by banks, instead of made by us.
Why banks, and why together
A single bank issuing its own stablecoin concentrates trust in one balance sheet, one set of internal controls, one regulator’s sign-off. For a euro-denominated instrument meant to work across borders, that concentration is a weakness. A consortium spreads it differently. Multiple banks, each already answerable to their own national supervisors, sit under one shared entity and one licensing process. Governance moves above any single institution rather than living inside it. That takes longer to build. It also holds up better once it exists.
Raiffeisen Bank International and KBC aren’t unusual choices for a structure like this. Raiffeisen already coordinates across Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. KBC does the same across Belgium and Central Europe. Aligning standards across jurisdictions isn’t new work for either bank, it’s close to daily practice.
What this signals for the wider industry
Two IBOS members being part of Qivalis says something about where the industry has landed on a debate that’s been running for over a year. A group of separately regulated banks choosing shared infrastructure over unilateral launches tells you what the market believes will actually earn trust at scale.
It also puts a question to banks not yet part of a structure like this one.
Coordinated governance around stablecoins has moved past being a niche position. A meaningful part of the industry is building toward it now, under direct supervision, with a launch date measured in months rather than years. Banks waiting to see how it plays out are watching the standard get set without them.
The governance question hasn’t gone away
None of this settles how large stablecoins will become, or how fast. That’s a separate debate, and not one IBOS is trying to call. What Qivalis does show is that the banks treating governance as central to how these instruments get built are the ones shaping what the infrastructure looks like once it exists.
That’s consistent with how our own network operates across 38+ markets: coordination and shared standards deliver more than any single institution moving alone. Seeing that principle play out in a live piece of European payments infrastructure, built by member banks we already work alongside, is worth noting.
The question for the rest of the industry is simpler than it looks. Stablecoins are coming either way. Who gets to write the governance standard while it’s still being written is the part still up for grabs.