French banking group Crédit Agricole announced the launch of its euro-denominated stablecoin, EURXT, and tested the asset in the subscription to a tokenised money market fund.
Crédit Agricole S.A., the listed parent company of the French financial conglomerate Crédit Agricole Group, one of the largest banking groups in Europe and globally, introduced the EURO eXchange Token (EURXT) stablecoin.
The asset is issued by CACEIS, a Crédit Agricole subsidiary specializing in asset servicing for institutional clients. EURXT is issued on the Ethereum blockchain, maintains a 1:1 peg to the euro, and is fully backed by cash held on the balance sheet of CACEIS Bank.
The asset is classified as an Electronic Money Token (EMT) and complies with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. Information on the size and composition of the reserves backing the stablecoin will be updated on an ongoing basis.
Initially, EURXT will be available only to institutional investors and CACEIS corporate clients. According to Crédit Agricole, the stablecoin launch is part of the bank’s medium-term strategy to expand its tokenized finance business and blockchain settlement infrastructure.
The first transaction using EURXT settled the subscription to the tokenised Luxembourg-domiciled Amundi Money Market Fund (UCITS). Olivier Gavalda, CEO of Crédit Agricole S.A., said the use of a stablecoin in this type of transaction marked the first case of its kind in the European market. He added that EURXT is expected to improve settlement efficiency, reduce transaction times, and expand the use of tokenization across asset management and institutional asset servicing.
Euro-denominated stablecoins currently account for less than 1% of the global stablecoin market. At the same time, several European banks are planning to issue euro-pegged stablecoins. Qivalis, for example, brought together 37 financial institutions from 15 European countries to support the development of its planned euro-denominated stablecoin.
