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Qivalis gets Dutch EMI licence under MiCA, clearing issuance path for 37-bank euro token

De Nederlandsche Bank authorised Qivalis B.V. as an electronic-money institution on October 14, the MiCA prerequisite to issue the consortium's euro-denominated EMT.

by 4 min read
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Qivalis B.V., the Amsterdam-based euro-stablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks, announced on October 14 that De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) has authorised it as an electronic-money institution (EMI). The announcement, carried on qivalis.eu and relayed by CoinDesk and Cryptoast, is the licensing step MiCA requires before Qivalis can issue a euro-denominated electronic money token (EMT). The token is not yet live.

The licence, precisely

  • Entity: Qivalis B.V., registered in the Dutch Trade Register (KvK) under number 98235680.
  • Licence: EMI, granted by DNB. Not a CASP (crypto-asset service provider) authorisation — those are two separate MiCA regimes.
  • What EMI unlocks: under MiCA, an EMI authorisation is the prerequisite to issue a single-currency stablecoin (EMT) pegged 1:1 to a currency, backed by a fully segregated fiat reserve. Qivalis's intended token sits in that EMT bucket.
  • Residual step: Qivalis still needs to publish the MiCA white paper and satisfy additional conditions before the first token is minted. The consortium's own site still carries a disclosure that it does not currently issue electronic money or provide payment services to the public.

Issuance is planned "in the coming months" per the consortium; no exact date is public.

The 37-bank backing — what is public, what is not

The Qivalis cap table has been assembled in waves since 2025.

  • Founding nine (announced September 25, 2025): Banca Sella, CaixaBank, Danske Bank, DekaBank, ING, KBC, Raiffeisen Bank International, SEB, UniCredit.
  • December 1, 2025: BNP Paribas joined.
  • Later joiners publicly named: BBVA, DZ Bank, National Bank of Greece.

The headline figure — 37 shareholder banks across 15 countries — comes from the consortium itself. The full roster of 37 is not published; the names above are the ones confirmed in press releases from Qivalis or its member banks. The post does not fabricate the remaining 24 names.

Governance:

  • Supervisory board chair: Sir Howard Davies, former NatWest chair, former head of the UK Financial Services Authority.
  • CEO: Jan-Oliver Sell.

Technical shape

Qivalis has publicly stated:

  • Full fiat reserve, 1 EUR per issued token. The reserves live on-balance-sheet of the regulated issuer under the DNB supervision regime, segregated from Qivalis operating assets as MiCA requires.
  • Deployment on Ethereum. No sidechain, no permissioned ledger. Qivalis has not committed publicly to additional chains at launch.
  • Distribution not direct-to-retail. The token is to be issued to banks, exchanges, payment service providers and other market infrastructure, which then handle customer-facing distribution.

Where Qivalis sits in the MiCA euro-stablecoin field

The DNB authorisation puts Qivalis alongside, not ahead of, several other MiCA-compliant euro issuers:

  • Societe Generale-Forge's EUR CoinVertible (EURCV) — issued by a French credit institution subsidiary of a bank; distinct governance and distribution from Qivalis.
  • Circle's EURC — issued by Circle Mint France, a MiCA-licensed EMI.
  • Monerium's EURe — issued by an EMI since 2019, now MiCA-aligned.

What Qivalis changes is the shareholder base. EURCV, EURC and EURe are issued by single institutions; Qivalis is a cooperative issuance structure owned by 37 European banks. Whether that model attracts bank-to-bank settlement flows that the single-issuer EMTs have not been able to pull in is the first real test, not the mint itself.

What to watch

  1. DNB public register entry. The licence is official on announcement; a Qivalis entry in the DNB EMI sub-register is the on-regulator confirmation reporters and counterparties will cite. The DNB public register is at dnb.nl/en/public-register.
  2. The MiCA white paper. Required before issuance. The white paper fixes the reserve-asset mix, the redemption mechanics, the governance of the reserve, and the stress-event procedures. All concrete token-safety questions are answered — or not — in that document.
  3. First mint and first bank-side integration. The structural claim is bank-to-bank settlement. The first visible event is likely to be a founding-bank treasury flow using the token internally; the second, cross-bank settlement with another member.
  4. The remaining 24 shareholder names. The full roster will matter for cross-border coverage. Any bank in a MiCA-aligned member state that joins post-launch extends the native-euro distribution footprint by one jurisdiction.

Context

The European Central Bank has publicly resisted a market dominated by dollar stablecoins on euro-area rails, and MiCA was tightened around EMTs partly in response. Three EMI-licensed euro stablecoins already exist, with aggregate circulating supply well below the dollar equivalents; Qivalis is the first with a bank-consortium cap table, which is the shape MiCA's drafters publicly described as desirable but had not seen built. The DNB licence closes the regulatory question; whether the token circulates in volume now turns on the member banks' internal integration work, not on further supervision.

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