Santander, BBVA, Trade Republic, and Western Union to debate stablecoins at MERGE Madrid 2026

MERGE Madrid 2026 will put four very different stablecoin use cases on the same stage: bank-led euro settlement, a prospective digital dollar, retail crypto access, and remittances. For PSPs and banks, the useful bit is not the panel drama; it’s the direction of travel for regulated digital money on public blockchains and under MiCA.

1. MERGE Madrid 2026 will run from October 27 to 29 at the Madrid Stock Exchange and Cibeles Palace, with over 3,000 attendees and 250 international speakers. The event is positioning Madrid as the place where banks, fintechs, and payment companies compare notes on what stablecoins are supposed to do in practice: move money faster, reduce transfer costs, and settle assets inside regulated rails.
2. BBVA, together with Banca Sella, BNP Paribas, CaixaBank, Cecabank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Kutxabank, Piraeus Bank, Raiffeisen Bank, and Bankinter, will present its role in Qivalis, a consortium of 37 financial institutions across 15 European countries. The group is preparing a euro-denominated stablecoin under MiCA, with commercial launch planned for the second half of 2026, subject to relevant authorization. On paper, that means faster, cheaper payments and transfers available 24/7, plus settlement of digital assets in a regulated environment.
3. Santander will discuss the initiative it is exploring with Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, MUFG, TD Bank, and UBS to issue a digital money instrument backed one-to-one by reserves and available on public blockchains. The project looks at currencies linked to G7 currencies, which is the part PSPs should care about: international banks are trying to set common standards for operating with digital money without treating it like an unregulated side quest.
4. Trade Republic will bring the perspective of one of Europe’s leading investment and savings platforms on incorporating digital assets into everyday financial services. The practical question here is how retail demand gets translated into regulated access to crypto-assets, and what role digital platforms will play as Europe’s financial infrastructure starts to accommodate them.
5. Western Union will present its USDPT stablecoin, bringing a digital dollar angle from one of the world’s largest remittance networks. For cross-border players, that matters because remittances are one of the clearest commercial cases for stablecoins: if the settlement layer changes, the economics of sending money change with it.

The wider signal for high-risk payment businesses is straightforward: stablecoins are moving from crypto-native experiments into bank, remittance, and investment-platform discussions, with MiCA now shaping at least part of the European answer. If you run payments in a vertical where cross-border flow, settlement speed, and treasury control matter, this is not theoretical anymore; it is where the infrastructure conversation is happening.