Banks Shift to Stablecoin Infrastructure as Cross-Border Transfers Jump 80%

Banks Move Past Trading Desks

Executives from major banks and payments firms said on Wednesday at MERGE Madrid 2026, held at Madrid's Palacio de Cibeles, that they are moving beyond trading services to build the infrastructure behind stablecoins and tokenized assets. The shift rests on measurable usage. Chainalysis research puts cryptocurrency economic activity at roughly $9.4 trillion between June 2025 and June 2026, down only 1.6% from the prior year even though the stretch brought bear-market conditions across much of the market. Jordan Wain, the firm's Global Policy Lead, told attendees that cross-border stablecoin transfers rose 80% over the same window. In his view, activity held nearly flat through a soft price year because usage now extends past speculation into real payments. For these institutions, tokenization is a plumbing decision tied to custody and settlement rather than a standalone product.

Revenue still sits with trading. “Where are banks making money today?” asked Stijn Vander Straeten, chief executive of Crypto Finance Group, part of Deutsche Börse, answering that it remains the crypto offering banks sell their clients. Even so, the sector is funding staking, tokenized deposits and new settlement infrastructure beyond its spot trading desks; tokenized deposits, in this model, are bank liabilities recorded on-chain so corporate clients can move value through permissioned rails while keeping the familiar legal wrapper. Visa's Alexandra Soroko highlighted stablecoin card settlement, which lets institutions clear obligations seven days a week, and named cross-border business payments and corporate treasury as the next growth areas. Executives from Commerzbank, N26 and Applied Blockchain described banks as the infrastructure layer that lets clients use stablecoins rather than holders of large token balances themselves.

Issuers Claim Remittances and the Euro

Issuers used the stage to stake out positions. Malcolm Clarke of Western Union and Emilio Rivero Coello of Anchorage Digital walked through USDPT, the dollar-backed stablecoin Western Union launched on Solana (SOL) in May through Anchorage. It debuted in Bolivia and the Philippines, two remittance-dependent markets, positioned as a replacement for the traditional rails Western Union uses to settle with its agents, not as a consumer product. On Anchorage's side, the design swaps pre-funded correspondent accounts for stablecoin balances, cutting settlement from days to minutes.

Europe's counter is the Qivalis consortium, an Amsterdam-based, bank-led euro stablecoin project that has grown from nine founding banks to 37 institutions across 15 countries. Raiffeisen Bank is a founding member, with Intesa Sanpaolo and Ripple also on the panel through Niccolò Bardoscia and Tania Griffith. The project plans to operate under MiCA, the EU's markets-in-crypto-assets framework, on public Ethereum (ETH), supervised by the Dutch central bank. The gap it is chasing is wide: euro-denominated stablecoins add up to less than $1 billion in market capitalization against more than $300 billion for dollar-backed tokens. Both designs are fully reserved, a contrast with algorithmic stablecoins, which hold their peg through supply mechanics rather than reserves.

Speakers agreed the obstacles to institutional scale sit mostly inside the banks. Fireblocks' Shrutisagar Chandrasekaran called the barrier an operating model issue, a matter of people, process and governance. Luis Nacarino of Santander CIB pressed for interoperability between digital money systems, and Iberpay's Alberto Carlos Alonso Temprado said blockchain should improve Europe's existing rails rather than replace them. The day's main announcement came from Bit2Me. Abel Peña, the company's chief security officer, said the Spanish crypto exchange has received authorization to launch STX, a security token offering that will tokenize shares and bonds, aimed first at medium-sized companies. BBVA and Bullish warned on the same panel that tokenization needs enough liquidity for investors to trade, including in volatile periods. Mastercard, Tether and the Cardano Foundation discussed AI agents making payments for consumers and businesses, and the permissions and digital identities that would require. The conference closes Thursday with regulators from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Cyprus and Luxembourg on stage.

Why the Euro Gap Matters

Our reading of the Madrid statements is that the load-bearing items are the licenses and rosters, not the panel commentary. Two facts change what regulated institutions can do now: Bit2Me's STX authorization and the Dutch central bank's supervisory role over Qivalis's planned MiCA launch. Both extend regulated issuance of digital money and tokenized securities inside the EU perimeter, which is where banks say the volume actually lives. The unresolved variable is the euro side. A sub-$1 billion euro stablecoin market against $300 billion of dollar tokens means Europe's banks are building rails before the cargo exists, and the 37-member Qivalis roster is the first credible banking-side attempt to close that distance.