Yesterday, the $6 trillion asset manager Fidelity Investments announced it will launch a U.S. dollar-based stablecoin, FIDD, on Ethereum in the coming weeks.

This move positions Fidelity as the second global asset manager, after WisdomTree, to enter the stablecoin market. Similar to its competitor, FIDD is designed to complement an existing tokenized money market fund, pointing to a growing institutional appetite for moving efficiently between cash and yield on a 24/7 basis.

Notably, the announcement also highlights Fidelity’s intention to list FIDD on major exchanges. And while Tether likely won’t have to fear for its lunch on Binance and Bybit, it will certainly catch the eye of CME or ICE.

Today, we’ll take you behind the scenes of:

An accelerating trend: Over the past few months alone, several major European banks, including DZ Bank, KBC, and Groupe BPCE, have either announced or launched retail crypto offerings. Market participants consulted by Blockstories expect this momentum to accelerate significantly in 2026, as more European banks launch or expand retail crypto services.

Why it matters: Regulatory frameworks such as MiCA have helped legitimize crypto within banks, allowing digital assets to be treated as a standard financial product. It is also a defensive move. With direct visibility into retail money flows, banks can see how client funds are moving to crypto platforms, prompting them to view crypto more as a competitive necessity.

Behind the scenes: To understand how this shift is playing out in practice, Blockstories spoke with several European banks as well as with Bitpanda Technology Solutions, Boerse Stuttgart Digital and tradias, three of the leading providers powering the crypto offerings of European banks today. Our condensed findings are presented below.

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The German-speaking region is among the most advanced, reflecting years of regulatory engagement with crypto custody and market infrastructure. This is reinforced by Germany’s federated banking structure, where savings banks and cooperative banks rely on shared service platforms. Both the Sparkassen and Volksbanken networks are preparing broad retail crypto launches backed by their central institutions, with rollouts expected in 2026.

Southern Europe, particularly Spain, shows some of the strongest demand signals. France, by contrast, has moved more cautiously, reflecting a traditionally conservative retail banking culture, though momentum is now building there as well.

Across all markets, the sequence of adoption is consistent. Private banks such as AMINA and Bank Frick, along with institutional-focused players like Sygnum, moved first, as crypto exposure for professional clients is easier to justify from a risk and suitability standpoint. Digital banks and brokerage-led platforms such as N26 and Trade Republic generally followed, while large universal retail banks are expected to move last.

At launch, many banks tend to opt for a full-stack crypto-as-a-service setup rather than assembling a modular architecture from day one. A typical example is the neobank N26, which rolled out a retail crypto offering in 2022 based on Bitpanda’s white-label solution.

This approach allowed banks to move quickly while outsourcing the operational complexity of crypto, which spans trading infrastructure, liquidity access, custody, settlement, and compliance tooling. The bank typically retains control over the customer relationship, onboarding, front-end, and risk governance, while relying on external providers to run the crypto-specific plumbing.

There is, however, no single standard blueprint. Some banks, such as KBC, launch crypto via their existing brokerage platforms, offering digital assets alongside equities and ETFs, while others roll out a dedicated crypto module within their retail app, as seen with Hexarq, developed by the French banking group BPCE, or meinKrypto by DZ Bank.

For many banks, closed-loop launch models are a pragmatic starting point. For example, KBC explicitly adopted a closed-loop structure for crypto trading on Bolero, where clients can only buy and sell within the platform and cannot transfer assets in or out.

This approach is materially simpler than enabling onchain transfers, which introduce additional requirements around wallet verification, transaction screening, and travel-rule compliance. These processes are unfamiliar to most retail banking operations and significantly increase operational complexity at launch.

Over time, bank crypto offerings are expected to shift from integrated, full-stack setups toward more modular architectures.

As internal expertise grows, the clearest evolution path is selective insourcing, particularly around custody. Safekeeping digital assets aligns closely with traditional banking responsibilities, and some institutions see long-term strategic value in owning this function.

By contrast, areas such as liquidity provision and execution are expected to remain largely outsourced, as running 24/7 crypto markets at scale is operationally demanding and offers limited differentiation for most banks.

While much discussed, banks largely treat them as a parallel track with different use cases and timelines. In retail, euro-denominated stablecoins do not yet offer a compelling value proposition over existing bank money.

That said, in conversations with banks participating in the euro stablecoin consortium Qivalis, integrating the stablecoin into retail crypto trading offerings for settlement is frequently cited as a key demand driver.

What’s the news?

Behind-the-scenes: We spoke with Harry Donnelly, CEO and founder of Circuit, to better understand the key bottlenecks insurers face when entering the digital assets industry and the current state of adoption.

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