Goldman Sachs, Citi and Other Banks Commit $270 Million to Project Faro Stablecoin Venture

A group of the world's biggest banks has put real money behind its plan to take on Tether and Circle. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other lenders have committed about $270 million to a joint stablecoin venture, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The money is meant to cover the first five years of operating costs for the new company, which goes by the internal codename Project Faro. It plans to issue a dollar-pegged stablecoin and is expected to be incorporated in the United States, according to CoinDesk and Investing.com, which both carried the Bloomberg report.

The banks involved did not immediately respond to CoinDesk's request for comment, so the figures come from Bloomberg's sources rather than an official statement.

Who is behind Project Faro

The venture was first announced on September 1 in a press release published by Banco Santander. It said 21 international financial institutions had committed to set up a new company in the second half of 2026, subject to closing conditions, to support the issuance of a stablecoin.

The North American members listed in that release are Bank of America, Capital One, Citi, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, PNC Financial Services, Scotiabank, TD Bank Group, Wells Fargo and WisdomTree.

From Europe come Banco Santander, BBVA, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank and UBS. MUFG Bank represents East Asia, Sirius International Holding the Middle East, and Standard Bank Africa.

The project grew out of exploratory work announced in October 2025, when an initial group of ten banks began looking at a 1:1 reserve-backed form of digital money that could run on public blockchains.

What the $270 million is for

Tuesday's report is the first sign of how much the members are willing to spend. Roughly $270 million spread over five years is not a huge sum for banks of this size, but it turns a press-release ambition into a funded company with a runway.

According to Investing.com, the participants are still searching for a chief executive to lead the business toward a commercial launch targeted for the first half of 2027. The Santander release gave the same timeline for going to market.

The company's name has not been announced yet. The September release said it would be revealed in due course.

A dollar token first, then the euro

The first product will be a stablecoin tied to the U.S. dollar. After that, the group wants to issue tokens pegged to other Group of Seven currencies, with a euro-denominated coin as the priority, CoinDesk reported.

The consortium says the token will serve wholesale, institutional and retail customers. The use cases named in the original announcement include cross-border payments and settling trades in digital assets.

The group also said it intends the product to comply with the U.S. GENIUS Act and Europe's MiCA rules where they apply. That matters because U.S. regulators are now writing the detailed rules for issuers; the OCC recently finalized its GENIUS Act stablecoin rule, setting a January 2027 deadline for issuers.

Taking aim at Tether and Circle

The bigger story is competition. Investing.com noted that established issuers dominate a stablecoin market of roughly $290 billion, with Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC controlling about 85% of the supply in circulation.

The banks are betting that their compliance teams, balance sheets and client relationships can win business that crypto-native issuers have had largely to themselves. If you need a refresher on how these tokens keep their value, our explainer on what a stablecoin is and how USDT and USDC hold their peg covers the basics.

Faro is not the only large group chasing the market. CoinDesk pointed out that more than 140 companies, including Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and BlackRock, joined forces in June to develop the Open USD stablecoin.

Individual banks are moving too. HSBC has already launched RedCoin, a bank-issued Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, showing that lenders are willing to put their own names on tokens.

The timing is awkward for stablecoins

The funding news lands while on-chain dollars are shrinking. The Block's research team reported this week that total stablecoin supply fell 1.4% in the past week, the largest weekly decline since early 2023, and that USDC and USDT supply are down 6.67% and 5.4% respectively this year.

The Block linked part of that drop to the Binance hack and to a steady run of exploits, which it said have pushed many users to prioritise the safety of their dollars over keeping them on-chain.

That backdrop arguably helps the banks' pitch. A token issued by regulated lenders with long track records may appeal to institutions that have grown wary of crypto-native risk.

Payment networks are building the rails at the same time. Visa reported an annualised stablecoin settlement run rate of $20 billion as of September, up more than 15 times from a year earlier, according to The Block.

What happens next

The next milestones are practical ones: naming the company, hiring a chief executive and closing the conditions attached to its formation. None of those dates have been made public.

After that comes the 2027 launch window and the question of which blockchains the token will live on. The September release only said it would be available on public blockchains.

For now, the $270 million commitment is the clearest signal yet that Wall Street and its European and Asian peers are serious about issuing their own digital dollars rather than leaving the market to Tether and Circle.