The 21 financial institutions building a joint dollar stablecoin have committed about $270 million to the venture, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday 10 November, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the report, relayed by Bitcoin.com and Cointelegraph, the money is meant to cover the first five years of running costs of a new US-incorporated issuer. It does not back the coins: the reserves, expected to be held one for one in eligible assets, are a separate pot.
Bloomberg calls the plan Project Faro, an internal label rather than the name of a company. The members include Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, Santander, UBS and MUFG Bank. They want a dollar coin on the market in the first half of 2027 and a euro coin after it.
The number is new. The plan is not. The same 21 institutions announced on 1 September that they would form a stablecoin company in the second half of 2026, in a release distributed by PR Newswire. What the Project Faro stablecoin still lacks, two months later, is a public name, a chief executive, a named blockchain and a stated regulatory route. Bloomberg reports that a CEO is being recruited.
What the $270 million Project Faro stablecoin budget pays for
According to Bloomberg, as relayed by Bitcoin.com on 10 November at 3:50 PM EST (20:50 UTC), the commitment is for operating costs: what it takes to run the issuer, not to back its coins, for five years. Per-bank shares have not been reported, and neither has the way ownership of the new entity will be split between the 21 members.
Spread over five years, $270 million is about $54 million a year. That is a running budget, not a market position. The stablecoin market stood at roughly $290 billion on 10 November, according to DefiLlama figures cited by Cointelegraph, with Tether’s USDT at about $176.3 billion and Circle’s USDC at about $70.4 billion. Together the two hold about 85% of all supply.
A bank coin grows only when clients swap dollars for it, and each coin issued has to be matched by a dollar of reserves. The $270 million buys the means to start that process, not the scale. Reserve custody, redemption arrangements and the chains the coin will run on have not been made public, Bitcoin.com reported.
From ten banks in October 2025 to 21 institutions in September 2026
The project began on 10 October 2025, when ten banks said they were jointly exploring a “1:1 reserve-backed form of digital money” on public blockchains, focused on G7 currencies, Decrypt reported at the time. Those ten were Banco Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, MUFG Bank, TD Bank Group and UBS. Their statement did not use the word stablecoin.
The 1 September 2026 release turned the study into a company plan. It says the 21 have committed to form a new company in the second half of 2026, “subject to closing conditions” that it does not list. The first product is a dollar stablecoin; later issuance would cover “additional G7 currencies, with a EUR offering as a priority”. The targeted uses run from wholesale and institutional business to retail, including cross-border payments and the settlement of digital assets.
On the rules, the release gives one line: “The initiative intends to be GENIUS Act and MiCA-compliant, as applicable.” The name of the company is to come “in due course”. Brunswick Group handles media enquiries and Boston Consulting Group business enquiries; the release says both act only as advisers and cannot bind the members.
Who is in Project Faro, and three big names that are not
The members, as listed in the 1 September release:
| Region | Members | Count |
|---|---|---|
| North America | Bank of America, Capital One, Citi, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, PNC Financial Services, Scotiabank, TD Bank Group, Wells Fargo, WisdomTree | 10 |
| Europe | Banco Santander, BBVA, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Coöperatieve Rabobank, UBS | 8 |
| East Asia | MUFG Bank | 1 |
| Middle East | Sirius International Holding | 1 |
| Africa | Standard Bank | 1 |
Not all of them are banks. Fidelity Investments and WisdomTree are asset managers, and Sirius International Holding is an investment holding company. Ten of the 21 are North American, which fits a project whose first coin is in dollars and whose issuer is to be incorporated in the United States.
JPMorgan Chase, the largest US bank, is not on the list. Neither are Barclays and BNP Paribas, although both were among the ten banks of October 2025; their departure has not been explained. BNP Paribas has since put its name to the euro consortium Qivalis instead.
Société Générale is absent as well, and it does not need a consortium for this: its digital assets arm SG-FORGE already issues a euro stablecoin, EURCV, launched in April 2023, and a dollar one, USDCV, launched in 2025 on Ethereum and Solana with BNY as reserve custodian. Both are MiCA e-money tokens supervised by the French ACPR, and neither is open to US persons.
The GENIUS Act deadline lands just before the planned launch
The US stablecoin law, signed on 18 July 2025, takes effect on 18 January 2027, as set out in our explainer on the GENIUS Act start date. A launch in the first half of 2027 would therefore come under the new regime from the first day. The Act lets only permitted issuers offer payment stablecoins to US users, with one-for-one reserves and timely redemption.
Which route Faro will take is not public. The law offers several: a subsidiary of an insured bank, a federally licensed nonbank issuer, or a state-licensed one below a size threshold. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has already written its side of the rulebook, covering reserves, two-day redemption and capital, as described in our report on the OCC’s final GENIUS Act rule. A stand-alone company backed by 21 institutions from four continents, with an ownership split that has not been disclosed, does not fit neatly into the bank-subsidiary box, so the choice of licence, and of supervisor, is one of the first things to watch.
The choice also decides what the $270 million has to cover. An issuer supervised by the OCC must hold minimum capital of at least $5 million and, on top of it, liquid assets equal to 12 months of total expenses, a buffer meant to keep the business running through a wind-down. If the issuer took that route and spent at the reported pace of about $54 million a year, the buffer would equal about one year of that budget, roughly $54 million, kept liquid rather than spent.
Governance is just as open. The release names no chair and no board, and it quotes no executive.
A euro coin would need a MiCA licence, which Qivalis already has
The euro coin is listed as a priority but comes second, after the dollar one, and no date is given for it. To be offered in the European Union it would have to be issued as an e-money token by an authorised electronic money institution or credit institution, with a white paper filed under MiCA. The release’s “as applicable” does not say which entity would do that or where.
The 37-bank Qivalis consortium is further along. Based in Amsterdam, it received an electronic money institution licence from the Dutch central bank in October but still has to publish its white paper and set a launch date, as covered in our report on the Qivalis licence. EU trading platforms also face a deadline of about 8 January 2027 to stop offering stablecoins that are not MiCA-compliant, explained in our page on the ESMA stablecoin deadline.
Two banks sit on both sides. BBVA was already one of the twelve members of Qivalis before 20 May 2026, and Rabobank joined that day among 25 new banks, according to the Qivalis release of that day. Both are also in Faro. If Faro ever issues in euros, they would be shareholders in two competing euro coins.
| Project Faro (reported label) | Qivalis | |
|---|---|---|
| Members | 21 institutions (10 North America, 8 Europe, 3 elsewhere) | 37 European banks in 15 countries |
| First currency | US dollar | Euro |
| Issuer base | New US-incorporated company, to be formed in H2 2026 | Amsterdam |
| Licence | None announced; aims for GENIUS Act and MiCA compliance | Dutch EMI licence (October 2026), white paper pending |
| Launch target | First half of 2027 (dollar coin) | No date set |
| Known funding | About $270 million for five years of operations (Bloomberg) | None reported |
| Members in both | BBVA, Rabobank | BBVA, Rabobank |
Bank coins against a market USDT and USDC hold 85% of
Faro is not the only bank project its members are part of. In Japan, MUFG Bank, Faro’s only Asian member, is also one of the three megabanks that reported in October on a joint yen stablecoin trial and aim for real payments by March 2027, as reported in our piece on the Japanese megabanks’ yen coin. MUFG is therefore working on a yen coin at home and a dollar coin with Faro.
The incumbents are crypto-native. Tether and Circle together accounted for about $246.7 billion of the roughly $290 billion in circulation on 10 November, per DefiLlama data cited by Cointelegraph. A bank coin starts at zero supply. The release names wholesale and institutional business first, with cross-border payments and the settlement of digital assets among the uses, which points to the members’ corporate clients before crypto traders.
The members already hold the client accounts and are already supervised as banks. What they do not have yet is a coin trading on crypto exchanges or sitting in lending pools, where USDT and USDC are entrenched.
What it means for readers in Europe
Only one French institution is a member: Crédit Agricole. BNP Paribas, Groupe BPCE and Banque Fédérative du Crédit Mutuel are in Qivalis, and Société Générale runs its own coins. No Italian bank is in Faro. Italian lenders have put their names on the euro project instead: UniCredit and Banca Sella were among its twelve members before May, Intesa Sanpaolo and BPER among the banks that joined on 20 May.
For a saver in the euro area, nothing changes today. There is no Faro coin to buy, hold or redeem, and a dollar coin issued from the United States would reach EU users through MiCA-authorised platforms only if it meets the e-money token rules. For companies that pay suppliers abroad in dollars, the question is whether their own bank, if it is a member, will offer the coin as a payment rail in 2027.
How a bank-issued stablecoin differs from a tokenized deposit
A stablecoin is a token that the issuer promises to redeem at a fixed value, here one dollar, and that is backed by reserves such as cash and short-term Treasury bills. It can move between any compatible wallets on a public blockchain, at any hour, without the holder having an account at the issuing bank.
A tokenized deposit is different: it is a bank deposit recorded on a ledger, a claim on that one bank, usually open only to its own clients. Faro, as described so far, follows the first model: one shared issuer and one coin, so holders would look to the new company and its reserves rather than to any one of the 21 banks.
Open questions and the dates to watch
- The company name, promised by the members “in due course”, and the identity of its chief executive.
- The licence route under the GENIUS Act, and which US regulator will supervise the issuer.
- The blockchains chosen, where the reserves will be held, and how holders will redeem.
- Whether the company is formed by the end of 2026, as the release plans, and what the closing conditions are.
- The split of the $270 million between members and the ownership of the issuer.
Three dates frame the project. EU platforms have until about 8 January 2027 to drop stablecoins that are not MiCA-compliant. The GENIUS Act takes effect on 18 January 2027. And the members aim to bring their dollar coin to market by 30 June 2027, the end of the first half of the year they set for themselves.