How big banks plan to capture a quadrillion-dollar market

“If we don’t have a euro on the blockchain, the banks will use the dollar because it’s there, it’s available and it has a lot of liquidity,” Sell told CoinDesk. Rather than each bank issuing its own euro stablecoin, Qivalis is encouraging them to work together in a single shared network.

Sell said Qivalis is not trying to compete directly with USDC. Its goal is to give European banks, businesses and payment firms a regulated euro alternative as tokenized finance expands. That would allow institutions to settle in euros rather than converting assets into dollars and back again.

As more banks join, the consortium also benefits from the same network effects driving USDC’s adoption. “The more banks we have in the consortium, the better. Our network has stronger network effects,” Sell said.

Investing in infrastructure

Agant’s MacKenzie said he sees the same trend emerging in the U.K.

Banks are no longer focused only on digital assets, he said. Instead, they are investing in the infrastructure needed to connect stablecoins with traditional finance for payments, treasury operations and settlement. Businesses generally prefer settling obligations in their own currencies, he said, rather than converting into U.S. dollars first.

That may be the impetus for introducing non-dollar stablecoins, such as Societe Generale’s EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), Credit Agricole’s EURXT and Qivalis’ impending offering. But existing is insufficient. It’s how the bank deploys the stablecoin to its customers that will determine its success.