Banks commit $270 million to Project Faro stablecoin venture

A group of global banks building a joint dollar stablecoin has put about $270 million behind the effort, according to a report Decrypt published Tuesday. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Banco Santander and Deutsche Bank are among the institutions committing the money, which is meant to cover five years of operations for a planned U.S. company that would issue the token.

The venture is known among participants as Project Faro. It still has no chief executive and no final name, and the companies involved have not commented publicly on the funding. A project spokesperson declined to comment, as did Santander and Deutsche Bank, while Goldman and Citi referred questions to the project, Decrypt reported. Unchained reached the same conclusion from the same disclosure: versions of the report published by other outlets did not say whether the money is equity or another form of capital, how much each bank is putting in, or which blockchain the token will use.

The funding report is the first concrete number attached to a plan that has been public since September, when 21 financial institutions announced they would establish a new company in the second half of 2026 to issue a stablecoin, subject to closing conditions. That announcement set out the sequence: a dollar token first, a euro version as the priority among longer-term ambitions for other G7 currencies, and a target to go to market in the first half of 2027. The group began ten months earlier, in October 2025, as ten banks exploring a 1:1 reserve-backed form of digital money usable on public blockchains.

The September release named all 21 members. North America supplied Bank of America, Capital One, Citi, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, PNC Financial Services, Scotiabank, TD Bank Group, Wells Fargo and WisdomTree. Europe contributed Banco Santander, BBVA, Commerzbank, Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank and UBS, with MUFG Bank for East Asia, Sirius International Holding for the Middle East and Standard Bank for Africa. JPMorgan does not appear on the list, a gap Decrypt noted, even though JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo plan a tokenized deposit network for 2027 that Unchained has covered and that would push customer deposits onto a blockchain.

The competitive backdrop is concentrated. Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC together made up about 84% of the roughly $293 billion of dollar-pegged stablecoins in circulation on Tuesday, Unchained calculated from DefiLlama data, with USDT near $176 billion and USDC near $70 billion. When the bank consortium first went public in September, Circle's stock fell about 6% as investors priced in the prospect of bank-backed competition for USDC, according to Decrypt.

The September statement set out the intended uses: wholesale, institutional and retail markets where a trusted form of digital money helps, including cross-border payments and digital asset settlements. It also promised bank-grade compliance, strong governance, distribution and institutional risk management drawn from the participating institutions, and disclosed that Boston Consulting Group and Brunswick act as advisers to the initiative with no authority to bind the group or its members. The venture joins that stated purpose with actual capital now, five years' worth of operating money at a moment when the participants are still assembling the company.

Project Faro is one of several pushes by established finance into the issuance business. Visa, Mastercard and Stripe are among more than 100 companies backing the issuer Open Standard, and European banks have formed Qivalis to issue a euro coin, Decrypt reported. The banks behind Project Faro say the token is being designed to comply with the U.S. GENIUS Act, the first federal framework for dollar-pegged tokens, and, where applicable, the European Union's MiCA regime, language carried over from the September announcement.

There are rivals on other rails too. The Open USD stablecoin, whose backers include Coinbase, Visa and Stripe, already has about $924 million in circulation, Unchained reported, citing DefiLlama. The 21 banks, by contrast, have yet to name a CEO, settle on a name, issue a token or pick a blockchain, with a 2027 launch target still ahead of them.