A group of banking giants have reportedly pledged roughly $270 million in financing toward a joint stablecoin venture.
The banks included Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Santander and Deutsche Bank, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday (Nov. 10), citing sources familiar with the matter.
The funding is aimed at covering five years of operations at the new company, plans for which were revealed by a group of 21 banks earlier this year. That company will serve as the issuer of a dollar-denominated stablecoin and is expected to be incorporated in the United States, Bloomberg’s sources added.
“The pattern suggests banks have begun treating these instruments less as substitutes than as different tools,” PYMNTS wrote when the consortium was announced in September. “And public blockchain availability addresses a limitation inherent in tokenized deposits: the money does not necessarily have to remain inside a single bank’s proprietary environment.”
Known by the participants as Project Faro, the program is also searching for a CEO officer, the sources said, adding that the company’s final name is still under discussion.
The banks in question declined to comment, Bloomberg said. According to the report, the funding advances the initiative’s plan to launch a stablecoin in the first half of 2027. The project also expects to someday issue stablecoins tied to other currencies, beginning with the euro.
As Bloomberg noted, this is one of several stablecoin collaborations to have emerged in recent years as banks try to compete with crypto-native companies. Visa, Mastercard and Stripe are among more than 100 companies supporting the stablecoin issuer Open Standard.
That project, PYMNTS wrote in September, is asking a question that becomes increasingly uncomfortable as stablecoins enter mainstream payments: If platforms, banks and payment companies provide the customers and transaction volume, why should the stablecoin issuer capture most of the yield?”
Meanwhile, dozens of banks in Europe have launched Qivalis to issue a euro-denominated token. The group received permission last month from the Dutch central bank to operate as an electronic money institution.
In other stablecoin news, PYMNTS wrote this week that the tokens are “coming for corporate banking,” although recent headlines “showed that the cryptocurrency companies behind them are finding that the fastest way in may be through traditional banks themselves.”
Those headlines included PNC Bank’s expanded partnership with Coinbase and cryptocurrency-focused bank Anchorage Digital’s new collaboration with digital asset payment infrastructure company Lydian.
