The banks' G7 stablecoin still does not exist. A 37 bank euro project has overtaken it.

Qivalis, a euro denominated stablecoin venture owned by 37 banks across 15 countries, is targeting a launch in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory approval, CaixaBank has said. ING said on 19 May 2026 that the venture had reached 37 banks, up from twelve founding members: Banca Sella, BBVA, BNP Paribas, CaixaBank, Danske Bank, DekaBank, DZ Bank, ING, KBC, Raiffeisen Bank International, SEB and UniCredit.

The ten bank group that announced a G7 currency project in October 2025 has issued nothing. PYMNTS reported on 1 April 2026 that it had produced no shared token, no joint platform and no coordinated launch timeline, and that the effort had fragmented into separate regional and institutional tracks. The same report noted that Barclays had taken a stake in the United States clearing startup Ubyx at the beginning of 2026, and that a tokenised deposit network involving First Horizon, Huntington Bancshares, KeyCorp, M&T Bank and Old National Bancorp was expected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2026.

That statement, published through Banco Santander on 10 October 2025, said the banks were exploring the issuance of a form of digital money backed one for one by reserves and available on public blockchains, focused on G7 currencies. The signatories were Banco Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, MUFG Bank, TD Bank Group and UBS. It described the work as being at an early stage and framed the question as whether an industry wide offering could improve competition while meeting regulatory requirements and risk management standards.

One name appears on both lists. BNP Paribas is a member of the ten bank G7 exploration and a founding member of Qivalis, which is a fair summary of where the momentum has gone.

Qivalis is seeking authorisation as an electronic money institution from the Dutch central bank. It has said its reserves will hold at least 40 per cent in bank deposits with the remainder in short term sovereign bonds from diversified euro area issuers, a structure designed to meet the European Union's Markets in Crypto Assets regulation. Fireblocks announced in 2026 that it had been selected to provide the tokenisation and treasury infrastructure.

In Britain the direction has been different again. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, Nationwide and Santander have been piloting tokenised sterling deposits rather than stablecoins, with testing reported to run to the middle of 2026. Tokenised deposits are claims on a bank, not bearer tokens, which keeps them inside the existing deposit protection and monetary framework.

Regulation explains much of the divergence. The Bank of England published proposals for sterling denominated systemic stablecoins on 10 November 2025, then issued a policy statement and draft Code of Practice in June 2026. Analysis by the law firm Lewis Silkin, published on 24 June 2026, reported that the Bank had dropped the individual holding limits it originally proposed and replaced them with a temporary issuance guardrail applied to each systemic stablecoin product, and had also allowed a greater share of backing assets to be held in short term United Kingdom government debt. Responses to the draft Code close on 22 September 2026.

Andrew Bailey, the Bank's governor, has pressed British banks towards tokenised deposits rather than stablecoin issuance, on the grounds that dollar pegged tokens without direct redemption rights raise questions of monetary sovereignty, according to reporting through 2026.

Two forecasts hang over the market, and both remain forecasts. JPMorgan analysts estimated that stablecoin adoption could generate an additional US$1.4 trillion of demand for the United States dollar by 2027, reasoning that roughly 99 per cent of stablecoins are dollar pegged. Standard Chartered, in research led by Geoff Kendrick, its global head of digital assets research, estimated that as much as US$1 trillion could leave emerging market bank deposits for dollar stablecoins within three years, naming Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as most exposed.

Both numbers describe a dollar problem, which is precisely the case European regulators and European banks have been making. It also explains why the euro project has moved faster than the multi currency one. Qivalis works to a single rulebook and a single supervisor. The G7 consortium had ten members answering to ten domestic regimes and no common framework to build against.

What is still unresolved is whether anyone will use these tokens. Qivalis has an approval to obtain and a launch window that has not opened, the British pilots have not produced a public product, and the ten bank consortium has said nothing publicly about its own timetable since its October 2025 statement. On the record so far, the question is no longer whether banks can issue digital money. It is whether they can find customers for it.