Banks commit $270M to Project Faro stablecoin

A consortium of 21 financial institutions has committed about $270 million to Project Faro, a venture that will issue a US dollar stablecoin. Bloomberg reported it first, and Cointelegraph and Decrypt relayed the details. The money is meant to cover five years of operations for the new company, and the token is planned for the first half of 2027.

Funding size and timeline

According to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, the sum is around $270 million. It covers five years of operations for a company that will be incorporated in the US. The first token will be pegged to the dollar, a euro version will follow, and then the currencies of the other G7 countries.

The idea took shape in October 2025, when ten banks began discussing a joint issuer. In September 2026 another 11 institutions joined. Now the project has a concrete number.

A Faro spokesperson declined to comment. Santander and Deutsche Bank stayed silent too, while Goldman Sachs and Citigroup referred questions to the project itself.

Who is behind the project

The group includes Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, PNC, Capital One, TD Bank, UBS, BBVA, Lloyds Banking Group and MUFG. Fidelity Investments is also a participant. Members span North America, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Africa, but JPMorgan is not on the list.

Some banks take part in several projects at once. BBVA also belongs to Open USD and Qivalis. Rabobank joined the European Qivalis in May. BNP Paribas was among the first ten banks that discussed the project in October 2025, then moved over to Qivalis.

Rivals and market share

The stablecoin market is valued at roughly $290 billion. According to DefiLlama data as of November 10, about 85% of it sits in two coins. Tether's USDT has a market cap of around $176.3 billion, and Circle's USDC has $70.4 billion. Nearly every token on the market is pegged to the dollar.

The banks are not the first to try to push that pair aside. Two other initiatives are developing alongside Faro:

• Open USD, backed by Stripe, Visa and Mastercard together with more than a hundred other companies
• Qivalis, a European bank consortium of 37 members that received electronic money institution status from the Dutch central bank in October 2026
• Faro itself, which has not issued a single token yet

The market has already reacted to the idea of bank stablecoins. When the consortium was announced in September, Circle shares fell about 6%. Investors figured the banks could take away part of the demand for USDC.

Cointelegraph writes that the banks' main advantage is distribution. They already have customers, payment networks and business relationships. Turning those into users of onchain payments will be harder than they expect, the outlet notes.

What is still undecided

The project is still looking for a chief executive. There is no final name either, and Faro remains a working title. The token is being designed for the US GENIUS Act, which created the first federal rules for dollar-pegged coins in 2025, and where applicable for the EU's MiCA regulation.

The group wants the coin used in wholesale, institutional and retail settlements. Qivalis is also preparing a fully regulated euro stablecoin for payments, cross-border settlements and tokenized asset transactions.

At least half a year remains before launch. Decrypt points out that the 2027 target leaves room for delays. The participants have not given dates for the next steps, such as naming a chief executive or announcing the final name.