When I asked Rosalie Suurmeijer which panel at Amsterdam Fintech Event 2026 she was looking forward to, she picked one near the very end of the programme. On 8 October, Money20/20’s Oliver Smith interviews Floris Lugt, CFO of Qivalis, the company through which 37 European banks plan to issue a euro stablecoin. The session’s title is a question: is the euro stablecoin moment finally here? Five sessions over two days at the WTC Amsterdam deal with stablecoins and tokenisation, and this is the one that asks it outright.
| What you need to know |
|---|
| 1AFE26 runs five stablecoin and tokenisation sessions on 7 and 8 October, from a talk on how digital assets are reshaping payments to an interview with the CFO of Qivalis and a closing panel on the tokenised economy. |
| 2Euro stablecoins added up to about 798 million euros on 28 September, against more than 313 billion dollars in dollar stablecoins, according to DefiLlama. Circle's EURC and SG-FORGE's EURCV hold four fifths of the euro side. |
| 3Qivalis counts 37 banks from 15 countries and has applied to De Nederlandsche Bank for an e-money licence. Its own site says it is not yet authorised, and the launch target is the second half of 2026. |
| 4My read: the programme looks ahead to a euro market that is still small today, which makes it the right room for hard questions. I list the five I would bring at the end of this piece. |
The full conversation with Rosalie runs just over nine minutes. We walked through the building she will fill in October, and the AFE26 promo sits in the middle of it.
The sessions, and the market behind them
Visa opens the first day with Pierre Castronovo, its go-to-market lead for stablecoins in Central Europe. At 09:45 Kim Schneider, who leads stablecoins at Deloitte, talks about how digital assets are reshaping payments. A panel on scaling stablecoin use cases in Europe follows at 10:05 with Alexandra Soroko, who handles crypto partnerships and go-to-market at Visa, Bitvavo’s chief product officer Mateusz Wlodarczyk, Devan Moorthy, who leads European business development at Paxos, and Arthur van Lier, managing director for Europe at the crypto payments network Mesh.
The second day goes deeper into the plumbing. Deloitte hosts a stablecoin panel with Mauro Lorenzo Halve, who became chair of the Dutch crypto industry association VBNL on 1 March, Elmer Zwols of Worldpay and Deloitte’s own Jasper Verwaal, who leads its blockchain and digital assets practice in the Netherlands. Money20/20 then hosts the last two sessions: first Floris Lugt of Qivalis, then a panel on the tokenised economy with ING’s Monika Schƶning, zerohash’s Roeland Goldberg and Leonard Franken, a senior supervisor at the AFM.
The market all these people are discussing is still small. On 28 September DefiLlama’s stablecoin data counted 26 euro-pegged tokens with a combined supply of about 798 million euros. Dollar stablecoins stood at more than 313 billion dollars on the same data. Two issuers carry the euro side: Circle’s EURC at around 458 million euros and EURCV, from Societe Generale’s digital asset arm SG-FORGE, at around 183 million.
A market of that size still needs builders, and the people on these panels are the ones who would do the building: banks, payment firms, card networks and, on the closing panel, a supervisor from the AFM. All of them have to line up before a euro stablecoin is used much beyond trading.
The auditorium where all five sessions take place was empty when we filmed there on 23 September, and full at last year’s edition. The promo we made for AFE26 puts the two side by side.
Thirty-seven banks and one licence application
Qivalis is the reason the question feels live in Amsterdam. Nine banks, among them ING, UniCredit, CaixaBank and KBC, announced the joint venture in September 2025. BNP Paribas, DZ Bank and BBVA joined over the winter, and in May 2026 another 25 followed, taking the consortium to 37 banks across 15 European countries. It is a Dutch company, and its registered address on Strawinskylaan sits in the same WTC complex that hosts AFE26.
The people running it come from both worlds. Chief executive Jan-Oliver Sell previously led Coinbase Germany’s application for BaFin’s first crypto custody licence. Floris Lugt came from ING, where he was Lead Digital Assets in Wholesale Banking, and Sir Howard Davies, the first chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, chairs the supervisory board.
What Qivalis does not have yet is a licence. Under MiCA, only credit institutions and e-money institutions may issue a stablecoin tied to a single currency, which the regulation calls an e-money token. So Qivalis applied to De Nederlandsche Bank for an e-money licence, and its own website is plain about where that stands: the company “is not yet authorised and does not currently issue electronic money or provide payment services to the public.” The launch target it gave in December 2025 is the second half of 2026, which is exactly the window Lugt’s session falls into.
Here is what Rosalie said about it.
I’m really looking forward to the one of Money20/20. They are our partner on the second day and they are going to close off our programme. Oliver Smith from the content lead of Money20/20 is interviewing Floris Lugt, CFO from Qivalis, about stablecoins.
Rosalie Suurmeijer, Project Manager Events, Cognito
For more on the consortium, read my Money20/20 interview with Qivalis board member Marieke Flament from June, Do We Even Need Stablecoins? 35 Banks Just Answered, and our Dutch piece on Qivalis and its DNB licence route.
What the card networks are building
Visa is on stage twice before ten o’clock on the first morning, and that fits what the network has been building. It has been widening a stablecoin settlement pilot for card issuers and acquirers, and in April it said the pilot had grown 50 percent in a quarter to a 7 billion dollar run rate, adding five blockchains at the same time.
Mastercard, which opens the second day, has been moving along the same lines. In August 2025 it deepened its partnership with Circle so that acquirers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa can settle in USDC and in EURC, Circle’s euro stablecoin, and in June it announced settlement in regulated stablecoins such as USDC, PYUSD and RLUSD, along with weekend and holiday settlement for issuers and acquirers. When I joked that Visa, opening first, must be the more important partner, Rosalie did not take the bait.
No, I don’t say that. Definitely not. They are really equal partners to us and also to the Holland Fintech Association. Visa is opening our programme on the 7th and Mastercard on the 8th. And it’s really nice that they partner with us.
Rosalie Suurmeijer, Project Manager Events, Cognito
Settlement at network level is one of the few ways a euro coin can reach a checkout without every shop rebuilding its payment systems. With Visa on the use-case panel, that panel is the place to ask what it takes.
The theme behind all of this is what the organisers call the new financial infrastructure. Here is Rosalie on it, and on the line-up, in about a minute.
Frankfurt has doubts, and says so
Not everyone in Europe wants the private route. In a speech on 8 May at a Banco de EspaƱa forum, ECB President Christine Lagarde took on the argument that Europe must promote euro stablecoins of its own to avoid digital dollarisation. Her answer was to separate what stablecoins are for from the coins themselves. “We must build the public infrastructure that will enable alternative instruments, such as stablecoins and other forms of tokenised money, to operate within a framework anchored by central bank money,” she said.
The ECB’s own project is moving on a parallel track. The Eurosystem wants to be ready for a potential first issuance of the digital euro in 2029, provided the legislation is adopted in 2026, and the file is now in negotiation between the European Parliament and the member states.
Lugt walks into that debate on 8 October. A bank consortium is waiting on a licence to issue a euro stablecoin while the central bank argues that tokenised money should settle in central bank money. Both tracks can run at the same time, and he is well placed to explain how Qivalis expects them to fit together.
Five questions I would bring to the WTC
The Europe arm of zerohash, based in Amsterdam, has held a MiCA licence from the AFM since October 2025, and in May it added an e-money licence from DNB, which zerohash says made it the first MiCA-licensed firm to do so under the EBA’s guidance. Bitvavo holds its MiCA licence from the AFM as well. If you are going, these are the questions I would want answered, in the order the sessions run.
- To Visa on the use-case panel, 7 October at 10:15: what does launching a euro stablecoin look like from the network’s side, and which part of the chain does Visa want to run?
- To Bitvavo, Paxos and Mesh on the same panel: which euro stablecoin payment already happens at scale in Europe, outside trading?
- At Deloitte’s panel with VBNL, Worldpay and zerohash on 8 October: what does a Dutch firm need to hold before it can move euro stablecoins for clients, and how long does that take today?
- To Floris Lugt: what has to happen between now and the end of 2026 for Qivalis to launch, and what do 37 banks want from it first?
- At the closing panel with ING, zerohash and the AFM: who uses tokenised assets first, the banks or their clients?
What is Qivalis?
A Dutch joint venture of 37 European banks that plans to issue a euro stablecoin under MiCA. It has applied to De Nederlandsche Bank for an e-money licence and aims to launch in the second half of 2026.
How big is the euro stablecoin market?
About 798 million euros across 26 tokens on 28 September 2026, according to DefiLlama. Circle’s EURC and SG-FORGE’s EURCV hold roughly 80 percent of it.
When are the stablecoin sessions at AFE26?
On 7 October, Deloitte’s talk on digital assets in payments starts at 09:45, followed by the stablecoin use-case panel at 10:15. On 8 October, Deloitte’s stablecoin panel starts at 13:15, the Qivalis interview at 15:35 and the tokenised economy panel at 15:55. The full programme and tickets are on the Holland Fintech Association site.
Read next
Our preview of the event, in Dutch: Amsterdam Fintech Event 2026: wat crypto er te zoeken heeft.
On the rules that will shape any euro stablecoin: EBA puts stablecoin groups and crypto lending on MiCA review agenda.
All our AFE26 videos, including the full walk-through with Rosalie, are in this YouTube playlist. Cognito is at cognitomedia.com and the Holland Fintech Association at hollandfintechassociation.org.
I recorded the interview with Rosalie Suurmeijer at the World Trade Center Amsterdam on 23 September 2026. Quotes are verbatim, with filler removed. Market figures come from DefiLlama’s stablecoin data on 28 September 2026. Cryptofocus is a media partner of Amsterdam Fintech Event 2026. Nothing here is financial advice.
