Twenty-one banks and asset managers, including Citi, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Banco Santander and BBVA, said on 1 September 2026 that they will form a new company in the second half of 2026 to issue a USD-denominated stablecoin, with a first-half 2027 market target.
The joint release, also posted on BBVA’s site, names no ticker, no chain, and no company brand yet. What it does name is the product shape: a 1:1 reserve-backed dollar token on public blockchains, aimed at wholesale, institutional, and retail use, including cross-border payments and digital-asset settlement. A euro token is the stated next currency priority after the dollar.
Who is in the room
The roster spans five regions. North America brings Bank of America, Capital One, Citi, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, PNC Financial Services, Scotiabank, TD Bank Group, Wells Fargo, and WisdomTree. Europe adds Banco Santander, BBVA, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank, and UBS. MUFG Bank, Sirius International Holding, and Standard Bank fill East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Unchained and Blockhead both note that Boston Consulting Group and Brunswick Group are advising, without authority to bind the members. The group says it intends to be GENIUS Act and MiCA compliant where those rules apply.
This upgrades an October 2025 exploration by ten banks. The consortium has more than doubled since then. JPMorgan Chase is absent from the list. Blockhead reported last week that JPMorgan has held separate internal talks about a stablecoin of its own, distinct from JPM Coin, its existing tokenized-deposit product.
Three bank tracks, one competitive pressure
Readers of this desk already saw a related, but different, bank move in June: a Clearing House tokenized-deposit network backed by JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and others, also aiming at the first half of 2027. That project keeps value as insured bank deposits represented on-chain. Tuesday’s consortium is the other product: a stablecoin that customers can hold outside a deposit account, closer to how USDT and USDC already move.
A third track is the BankChain Alliance, which groups smaller U.S. lenders under state banking associations around shared rails for tokenized deposits and bank-issued stablecoins, also talking about 2027. Citi, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo sit in both the Clearing House deposit work and this new stablecoin company. That reads as hedging: banks want a seat on whichever dollar rail wins.
The competitive backdrop is the market they are late to. Unchained put Tether’s USDT near $183.3 billion in circulation and Circle’s USDC near $73.6 billion on the day of the announcement. Blockhead framed the same point bluntly: a stablecoin market around $300 billion has grown large enough that standing outside it looks riskier than joining a shared issuer.
What this means for LatAm dollar demand
Santander and BBVA are the LatAm-facing names on the list. Both already run large retail and corporate franchises across Spanish-speaking Latin America and Brazil. Scotiabank and TD add North American banks with Mexican and Caribbean footprints. None of the public materials names a Mexico corridor, a Pix off-ramp, or a SPEI payout partner. Treat those as missing product details, not implied launches.
What is on the table is a bank-issued dollar token sold into the same use cases LatAm users already buy USDT and USDC for: holding dollars outside local deposit risk, settling suppliers across borders, and moving value when correspondent banking is slow or expensive. If the consortium ships a GENIUS-compliant USD token with bank distribution, it becomes another issuer competing for the same wallets, remittance desks, and treasury accounts that already sit on Bitso, Mercado Bitcoin, and WhatsApp remittance apps we cover on this desk.
A bank-distributed stablecoin still needs a wallet path, a redemption desk, and a corridor cheaper than the incumbents before it displaces self-custody dollar tokens. Until those show up, this remains a formation announcement timed for H2 2026 incorporation and H1 2027 go-to-market — still short of a live rail you can send pesos on.
What is still missing
The release leaves the hard product questions open on purpose:
- Name and ticker. No brand, no symbol.
- Chain and custody. Public blockchains are named as a class; no L1 or L2 is chosen.
- Reserves and redemption. Composition, attestation cadence, and who can redeem at par are unpublished.
- Distribution. Whether the token ships inside member bank apps, through exchanges, or both is undecided in public.
Those gaps matter more than the member list. A consortium of twenty-one institutions can take longer to ship than a single issuer with a live mint. The October 2025 exploration already spent almost a year getting to a formation commitment.
Takeaway
On 1 September 2026, twenty-one banks and asset managers, from Citi and Goldman to Santander and BBVA, committed to form a company for a USD stablecoin aimed at the first half of 2027, with a euro token next on the roadmap and GENIUS Act / MiCA compliance named up front. The product is still unnamed, unchained, and unreserved in public.
For LatAm readers who already hold dollar stablecoins, the useful read is competitive. Watch for a ticker, a chain, a redemption path, and whether Santander or BBVA put the token inside products you already use. Until then, treat this as banks joining a market Tether and Circle already run while you keep the keys you control. This is partnership reporting, not advice to hold, switch, or wait for any issuer’s token.
