Germany’s DZ Bank has joined QIValis, a European consortium of banks developing a shared tokenised euro settlement asset, adding fresh momentum to bank-led alternatives to global stablecoins and public digital currencies. The move underlines how large European lenders are positioning themselves ahead of key decisions on the digital euro and the future structure of wholesale payments in the euro area.
DZ Bank, the central institution for Germany’s cooperative banking sector, becomes the latest major player to back QIValis, a project designed to create a regulated, bank-issued digital settlement instrument for use between financial institutions. According to reporting by Ledger Insights, the consortium aims to enable instant, on-chain settlement of tokenised assets while remaining fully anchored in the existing banking system.
The QIValis initiative brings together several large euro area banks seeking to offer a European alternative to dollar-denominated stablecoins and fragmented national tokenised deposit experiments. Unlike crypto-native stablecoins, the planned instrument would represent a direct claim on participating commercial banks and operate within existing regulatory and supervisory frameworks.
DZ Bank’s participation matters because of its scale and role in Germany’s financial system. Through its network of cooperative banks, the group serves millions of retail and corporate customers, giving it a strong interest in settlement infrastructure that can eventually support securities, collateral management, and cross-bank liquidity flows at scale.
For policymakers, projects like QIValis sit in an increasingly sensitive space. The European Central Bank has repeatedly warned that privately issued stablecoins could undermine monetary sovereignty if widely adopted, while also encouraging innovation in wholesale settlement through tokenisation and distributed ledger technology. Bank-led initiatives are often seen as a potential bridge, offering programmability and instant settlement without introducing new forms of private money outside the regulatory perimeter.
At the same time, the rise of consortia such as QIValis raises strategic questions about how commercial bank money, tokenised deposits, and a future digital euro might coexist. If banks can deliver efficient, interoperable tokenised settlement among themselves, the pressure on the ECB to provide a wholesale digital euro could evolve in unexpected ways.
DZ Bank’s entry signals that Europe’s largest lenders are no longer waiting on the sidelines. Instead, they are actively shaping the next generation of euro-denominated digital settlement, well before legislative and design choices around the digital euro are finalised.
Related: Euro Stablecoin Launch Planned by European Banking Consortium Through Qivalis by 2026