Major banks gear up to issue stablecoins

TLDR

Large banks are moving from pilots to serious plans to issue their own stablecoins on top of new regulation and custody infrastructure.

1. Big names like JPMorgan, Citigroup and SocGen already run in-house stablecoins, while up to 20 more banks and tech giants are queued to launch.
2. New laws such as the U.S. Genius Act classify qualified stablecoins as payment instruments, letting banks use them for cross-border payments, liquidity and tokenized deposits, not trading speculation.
3. The next 1224 months will likely bring multiple bank-issued stablecoins in the U.S. and Asia, raising questions about interoperability, regulation and how they compete with USDT and USDC.

Deep Dive

1. Who Is Actually Issuing

Several major banks have already built their own stablecoins or tokenized deposit systems. JPMorgans JPM Coin, Citigroups Citi Token Services and Societe Generales USD CoinVertible are live examples focused on internal and institutional transfers, according to a recent overview of real-world stablecoin usage by Yahoo Finances crypto desk, which also notes that banks use these tokens mainly for cross-border payments and real-time liquidity management, not retail trading yet.

Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered U.S. crypto bank, says it now has a dozen to maybe even as many as 20 banks and large tech firms lined up to issue stablecoins through its platform, and claims it has won every major issuance mandate since the Genius Act passed. This points to a broad pipeline of new, branded stablecoins that have not yet hit the market.

In parallel, South Korean banks are piloting a regulated Korean won stablecoin on the Kaia blockchain, with BTQs quantum-safe security stack, and eight banks are discussing a joint KRW stablecoin venture to avoid foreign dollar coins dominating local payments.

2. Why Bank Stablecoins Matter

The U.S. Genius Act defines certain stablecoins as payment instruments and sets reserve rules, which effectively allows regulated banks to issue their own tokens under a clear framework. Reporting on this law highlights that banks are already using stablecoins to accelerate cross-border payment flows, manage intraday liquidity between branches and pilot interbank settlement networks, with the goal of faster and more transparent transfers rather than speculative yield.

If large banks scale these rails, some wholesale and corporate flows that today use SWIFT, correspondent banking or legacy card networks could move to tokenized money. That could pressure fees and settlement times, and give banks a way to compete with crypto-native issuers like Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), and with fintechs such as PayPals PYUSD, that are already widely used in crypto and emerging-market payments.

3. What To Watch Next

Anchorages CEO frames the coming wave of 1220 institutional issuers as vastly underestimated, suggesting multiple launches over the next couple of years rather than a single marquee coin. The critical questions will be where these tokens live (public chains vs permissioned networks), who can hold them (only institutions or retail too) and how composable they are with existing DeFi and exchange venues.

Outside the U.S., the Korean KRW projects and Gulf-region initiatives, like dirham-backed stablecoins and institutional custody expansions, signal that regional banking blocs want their own regulated tokens rather than relying solely on dollar stablecoins. At the same time, lawmakers are tightening rules on yield and rewards for stablecoins, and regulators warn about dollarisation and financial integrity risks if bank and non-bank stablecoins grow too fast.

Conclusion

Major banks gearing up to issue stablecoins reflects a structural shift where tokenized money moves from crypto startups into the core of traditional finance. If bank-issued coins gain traction in payments and settlement, they could coexist and compete with USDT, USDC and other stablecoins, reshaping how value moves across borders and between venues. The real impact for crypto users will depend on interoperability and openness: bank coins that plug into public chains and DeFi could deepen liquidity, while closed, permissioned systems would mainly modernize bank plumbing behind the scenes.