Goldman, Citi Bet $270M on Project Faro to Rival Tether

• Goldman Sachs, Citi and the other Project Faro members have committed funding to a jointly owned dollar stablecoin issuer.
• The money covers years of operating costs and has nothing to do with token reserves.
• The venture still has no CEO, no final name and no disclosed blockchain.
• A rival group of European banks already holds a license for its own euro stablecoin.

A group of 21 banks and asset managers, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Banco Santander and Deutsche Bank, has committed roughly $270 million to the company that will issue its planned U.S. dollar stablecoin, according to people familiar with the discussions. The commitments, reported on November 10, are meant to fund about five years of operations for the venture, known internally as Project Faro, which targets a launch in the first half of 2027 and would compete with Tether and Circle for institutional dollar payments.

The $270 million pays for the issuer itself, meaning staff, technology, compliance and licensing, while the reserves backing each token will come later from the clients who buy them. The reporting does not show how much each institution contributed or whether all 21 members are paying in. A spokesperson for the project declined to comment, Goldman Sachs and Citi referred questions to the consortium, and Santander and Deutsche Bank also declined to comment.

Ten banks became 21, and two walked away

The original exploratory group included Barclays and BNP Paribas, and neither appears in the expanded membership announced on September 1. The current roster pairs U.S. lenders such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One and PNC with UBS, BBVA, Commerzbank, Lloyds, MUFG Bank and South Africa’s Standard Bank. Fidelity Investments, WisdomTree and Abu Dhabi-based Sirius International Holding are also members, so describing Faro as a group of 21 banks is slightly inaccurate. JPMorgan Chase stayed out and keeps building its own tokenized deposit network.

The interest income banks lose to Circle

A stablecoin issuer makes its money on reserves. When a corporate treasurer moves $100 million into USDC, that cash leaves a bank deposit and ends up in short-term Treasuries held for Circle, which collects the interest. Circle earned $657.6 million in interest on USDC reserves in the third quarter of 2026 alone, more than twice Faro’s entire reported five-year budget, even after a large share of its revenue went to the exchanges and platforms that distribute the token. A jointly owned issuer lets the members keep part of that flow while still offering clients transfers that settle outside banking hours.

Pooling the effort makes sense because a stablecoin gains value only as more counterparties accept it, and a token confined to one bank’s clients would struggle to get traction. With 21 members spread across five regions, Faro starts with a distribution network that no single participant could assemble alone.

The consortium says it will operate under the GENIUS Act, the 2025 U.S. law that requires one-for-one backing with high-quality liquid assets, guaranteed redemption and federal or state supervision, and under the EU’s MiCA regulation wherever the token reaches European clients. It has not yet received authorization under either framework.

Tether and Circle control 84% of supply

Dollar stablecoins totaled about $293 billion on November 10, according to stablecoin supply data, and the two market leaders benefit from deep liquidity and listings on virtually every major exchange. Faro is unlikely to win traders away from Tether, so its realistic targets are corporate cash management, bank-to-bank settlement and the cash side of tokenized securities trades. Growth in those areas could come from new demand and expand the market without draining Circle’s existing balances.

Qivalis already holds a euro license

Qivalis, an Amsterdam company owned by 37 banks from 15 countries including ING, BNP Paribas and UniCredit, received an electronic money institution license from De Nederlandsche Bank on October 14. That license makes it eligible to issue euro tokens, although it still has to publish a MiCA white paper before the coin can go on sale. BBVA and Rabobank sit in both Qivalis and Faro.

The same names keep appearing across these ventures. Fnality, which settles payments in money held at the Bank of England, raised a $136 million Series C in September 2025 led by Bank of America, Citi and WisdomTree, with Goldman Sachs, Santander and UBS returning as investors. Société Générale’s dollar stablecoin shows the limits of a big-bank name, since it had only about $12.5 million in circulation as of September.

Faro needs a license before January 18

The consortium plans to incorporate the issuing company before the end of 2026, subject to closing conditions, and that filing should reveal its final name and ownership split. The choice of CEO will indicate whether the consortium leans toward a banker, a payments executive or a crypto industry hire. Investors will also watch which regulator supervises the issuer under the GENIUS Act and which blockchain it picks, because that decision determines which exchanges, custodians and tokenized asset platforms can connect from day one. That license has a fixed deadline, because the GENIUS Act and the OCC’s final rule take effect on January 18, 2027, after which issuing a payment stablecoin in the U.S. without approval carries criminal penalties. The first named corporate clients or settlement pilots will then show whether 21 sets of banking relationships turn into actual token balances.

Members have said a euro token will follow the dollar product as the first of several G7 currencies, which would put Faro in direct competition with Qivalis and leave BBVA and Rabobank backing two rival euro stablecoins.