Last year Italy’s Bancomat announced plans for a Euro stablecoin, EUR.bank, and has now named the nine founding bank partners. They are Banca Generali, MPS, Sella, BPM, BPER, Cassa Centrale, CREDEM, Crédit Agricole Italia and Intesa Sanpaolo, and they have agreed to commence initial testing, which will be purely internal. Bancomat described the stablecoin as the first of other tools to be built as part of the Italian banking ecosystem.
The Italian payments firm was always likely to succeed in attracting participants given its role in Italian payments, providing branded credit and debit cards, point of sale systems, and a popular bank-to-bank payment app. It has also attracted the support of the Italian banking association, ABI, which has been a strong convener, especially for blockchain projects.
Three of the bank partners, Banca Sella, BPER and Intesa Sanpaolo, are also part of the larger European stablecoin consortium Qivalis, which has 37 pan-European members. Notably, Qivalis participant Unicredit has not been announced as a partner in EUR.bank. The news comes at a time when the ECB is taking a stance of avoiding encouraging stablecoin growth, as highlighted by a recent speech by ECB President Lagarde.
Like Qivalis, EUR.bank needs to receive regulatory authorization before proceeding. At this stage there are both similarities and differences between Qivalis and EUR.bank, and it remains to be seen whether these will persist when they are authorized.
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