At a glance

  • Qivalis, an Amsterdam company backed by 37 European banks in 15 countries, has been authorised by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) as an electronic money institution, which makes it eligible to issue euro e-money tokens under MiCA.
  • No token exists yet. Qivalis says issuance is planned “within the next months”, once it meets the remaining MiCA requirements and publishes a white paper.

Qivalis said on Wednesday that the Dutch central bank had granted it an electronic money institution (EMI) licence and that it is now under DNB’s ongoing supervision, in a press release.

The company was founded in September 2025. Its backers include ING, BNP Paribas and BBVA, CoinDesk reported. Qivalis plans a full-reserve euro token sold through what it calls a B2B2X model: banks, exchanges, payment service providers and market-infrastructure firms distribute it, rather than Qivalis selling to the public. Its supervisory board is chaired by Sir Howard Davies, a former chairman of NatWest Group and of the UK’s Financial Services Authority.

“Europe’s currency deserves Europe’s rules – on-chain,” chief executive Jan-Oliver Sell said in the release. He called the licence “a very important step towards issuing a euro-denominated EMT.”

What still has to happen

An e-money token, or EMT, is MiCA’s name for a stablecoin tied to one official currency. The licence is the gate; the white paper is the last formal step. Under Article 51(11) of MiCA, an EMT issuer must notify its white paper to its national supervisor at least 20 working days before publishing it. Qivalis has not said which blockchains the token will run on or what it will be called.

Ledger Insights reported that Fireblocks provides the digital-asset infrastructure and that DNB has already licensed Quantoz Payments, Fiat Republic and Aplauz to issue euro tokens. Qivalis is the first of them backed by a bank consortium, it said.

The euro market it would join is tiny. Euro-pegged stablecoins totalled about €831 million at 09:50 UTC on Thursday, according to DefiLlama. Circle’s EURC accounted for about €493 million of that and Société Générale-Forge’s EURCV for about €188 million. Dollar stablecoins stood at about $306.6 billion, so euro tokens are roughly 0.3% of the total.

The licence came on the same day that the European Banking Authority classed USDC as the first significant e-money token among the 45 notified under MiCA, as covered in the EBA’s decision on USDC. Circle has also been lobbying to change MiCA’s reserve rules, set out in Circle’s push to change MiCA’s reserve rules.

What it changes for users

Nothing yet. Qivalis says on its website that it does not currently issue e-money or provide payment services to the public. When the token arrives, EU users will reach it through a bank, exchange or payment app, not directly.

MiCA’s EMT rules will apply from day one: holders can redeem at par value at any time, and the token cannot pay interest, under Articles 49 and 50. Exchanges in the EU are already being told to drop tokens without MiCA approval, as ESMA’s order on non-MiCA stablecoins explains. A primer on the rules is in what a MiCA-compliant stablecoin is.

The next date to watch is the white paper notification, which starts MiCA’s 20-working-day clock.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.