In brief

• Goldman Sachs, Citi, Santander and Deutsche Bank are among banks committing roughly $270 million to a joint dollar-stablecoin venture codenamed “Project Faro.”
• The venture, which still lacks a CEO and a final name, builds on a September announcement by 21 institutions—now including Wells Fargo, Fidelity, UBS and Lloyds.
• It joins a wave of bank stablecoin efforts, though Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC still control about 85% of the market.

The group of global banks building a joint stablecoin has put real money on the table, committing around $270 million to fund the venture as it moves from blueprint to buildout.

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Banco Santander, and Deutsche Bank are among the institutions backing the effort, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The capital is meant to cover five years of operations for a planned U.S.-incorporated company that will issue a dollar-denominated stablecoin. Known among participants as Project Faro, the venture is still searching for a chief executive, and its final name remains under discussion.

A spokesperson for the project declined to comment, as did Santander and Deutsche Bank, while Goldman and Citi referred questions to the project.

The funding is the concrete next step for an initiative that first went public late last year. As Decrypt previously reported, 21 of the world’s largest financial institutions committed in September to form a company to issue a U.S. dollar stablecoin, targeting a launch in the first half of 2027, with a euro version and other currencies to follow.

That consortium had more than doubled from an initial group of 10 banks that began exploring the idea in October 2025, and now spans North America, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Beyond the four named by Bloomberg, its participants include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Fidelity Investments, PNC, Capital One, TD Bank, UBS, BBVA, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group and MUFG, among others. JPMorgan, notably, is not on the list.

The venture is one of several collaborative pushes by established finance into a business long dominated by crypto-native players. Visa, Mastercard and Stripe are among more than 100 companies backing the issuer Open Standard, while European banks have formed Qivalis to issue a euro-denominated coin.

At the moment, Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC together account for about 85% of a market worth roughly $290 billion, nearly all of it dollar-pegged. 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.

The banks are betting that institutional trust, regulatory alignment and existing client networks can win them a share of a settlement business that promises round-the-clock, cross-border payments at lower cost than traditional rails.

The token is being designed to comply with the U.S. GENIUS Act, which created the first federal framework for dollar-pegged tokens in 2025, and, where applicable, the EU’s MiCA regime. The group has said it wants the stablecoin used across wholesale, institutional and retail markets.

For now, Project Faro remains pre-launch, with no issued token, no named CEO, not even a final name, and a 2027 target that leaves ample room for delay.

But the $270 million commitment marks a shift, and a concrete signal that this bank consortium intends to compete for the onchain dollar rather than leave it to crypto.

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