On Sept. 1, 21 major financial institutions — including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo — committed to building a stablecoin. The group plans to set up a company in the second half of 2026 and launch a US dollar-denominated token in the first half of 2027, designed to comply with both the GENIUS Act and MiCA.
The plan
What started as a 10-bank exploration into reserve-backed digital money in October 2025 has grown to 21 institutions spanning North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The stated use cases are wholesale and institutional activity, cross-border payments, digital-asset settlement, and retail markets where client benefits can be achieved.
The timeline is concrete: incorporate the company in the second half of 2026, launch the token in the first half of 2027. That gives the group roughly a year to sort out governance, technology and regulatory approvals on both sides of the Atlantic.
Why banks are moving
Citi's 2030 research projects a base case of $1.9 trillion in stablecoin issuance and a bull case of $4 trillion, with base-case annual transaction activity near $100 trillion and bull-case near $200 trillion. Those numbers help explain why banks are willing to cannibalize one part of their existing model — deposits — to avoid surrendering the entire customer relationship to a crypto-native competitor.
Citi's research also expects stablecoins, tokenized deposits, deposit tokens and central bank digital currencies to coexist. It projects that bank-token transaction volume could exceed stablecoin turnover by 2030. That's a bet that banks can keep the settlement layer for themselves even as the rails go digital.
The competitive picture
The stablecoin market is already crowded. Total market capitalization sits near $303.7 billion, and Tether's USDT alone accounts for more than 60% of that. The new bank-backed token will have to fight for share against an entrenched incumbent that has been running for years.
It's not just a dollar game either. Qivalis, a separate 37-institution consortium, is building a euro-pegged stablecoin. So the bank-led push is happening on both sides of the currency divide.
The next concrete step is incorporating the company in the second half of 2026, with the token launch targeted for the first half of 2027. Whether a 21-bank consortium can actually dent Tether's grip is an open question — but they're clearly betting that regulatory compliance and institutional trust will matter more than first-mover advantage.
