Banks and large corporates across Europe are shifting from education to implementation, actively choosing infrastructure partners to support stablecoin use, according to Lamine Brahimi, co-founder and managing partner of crypto custody technology provider Taurus.
Brahimi said that while conversations about stablecoins were largely educational 18 months ago, many firms now have board-level approval and are preparing to go live. He credited the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) with accelerating the shift by replacing disparate national rules with a single bloc-wide framework.
“In the past 12 months alone some of Europe’s most stringent financial institutions are all arriving at the same conclusion: digital assets, including stablecoins, belong inside the existing banking stack, not beside it,” Brahimi said.
Corporate treasury teams are a major driver of demand. Initially focused on payments and settlement, companies are exploring stablecoins to speed fund transfers, lower costs and enable value movement beyond traditional banking hours.
Several institutional moves underline the trend. ClearBank Europe recently became the first Dutch credit institution to secure MiCA approval to offer digital-asset services. A consortium of major banks — including ING, UniCredit, CaixaBank and BBVA — is pursuing Qivalis, a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin project aimed at regulated on-chain payments and settlement across Europe. Paris-based Societe Generale has rolled out euro stablecoin initiatives for cross-border payments, on-chain settlement, FX and cash management, and Oddo BHF has launched a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin. A group including ING, UniCredit and BNP Paribas is preparing a Swiss-franc stablecoin for the second half of 2026.
Demand from payment platforms and exchanges also reflects growing adoption. Paybis co-founder and chief business development officer Konstantin Vasilenko reported a sharp rise in USDC activity in the EU: between October 2025 and March 2026 USDC volume on Paybis climbed about 109%, and its share of total stablecoin activity rose from roughly 13% to 32%. Vasilenko noted that buyer volume in the EU remained about five to six times higher than seller volume over that period, and that average stablecoin transactions were typically 15% to 35% larger than typical Bitcoin or Ether trades — consistent with use cases tied to working capital, settlement and deliberate business flows.
Industry forecasts point to very large future volumes. A Chainalysis report projects stablecoin transaction volumes could reach roughly $719 trillion by 2035 under an organic-growth scenario (up from about $28 trillion in 2025). In a more aggressive scenario, volumes could climb to as much as $1.5 quadrillion if stablecoins become a dominant payments infrastructure and if generational shifts accelerate adoption.
Will Harborne, CEO of stablecoin infrastructure provider Rhino.fi, expects stablecoins to grow in importance for corporate treasury, cross-border settlement and FX between euro and dollar stablecoins over the coming years. “I think every business will eventually start accepting and using stablecoins in some form, and the companies that prepare early will be in the best position when that shift becomes mainstream,” he said.
As firms move from pilots to production, they are selecting regulated partners and integrating digital assets into existing banking processes rather than treating them as separate systems. This phase of execution — driven by practical needs for efficiency and availability — suggests a rapid period of implementation across Europe’s financial and corporate sectors.
This article is a rewrite of reporting on developments in Europe’s stablecoin adoption and aims to provide a clear summary of the current state of play. Readers should verify details independently and consult original reporting for further context.