MiCA Stablecoin Regulation | EU Opportunity | CoreFi

In October 2024, Stripe completed its $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company — the largest crypto acquisition in history at the time. The message from one of the world's most influential payments companies was unmistakable: stablecoins are not a sideshow. They are the next layer of global financial infrastructure.

Three months later, on December 30, 2024, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) became fully applicable across the European Union. For the first time, a major economic bloc had a comprehensive regulatory framework governing crypto-assets, stablecoin issuance, and crypto-asset service providers (CASPs). The timing was not coincidental — it was convergence.

The stablecoin market now exceeds $227 billion in market capitalization, with transaction volumes reaching a staggering $27.6 trillion in 2024 — surpassing Visa and Mastercard combined. Yet the infrastructure to issue, manage, and settle stablecoins within a regulated banking framework remains remarkably underdeveloped, particularly in Europe.

This gap represents one of the most significant opportunities in fintech: enabling banks and electronic money institutions (EMIs) across the EU to issue and manage their own MiCA-compliant stablecoins. And the key to unlocking it lies not in blockchain startups, but in core banking platforms.

What MiCA Means for Stablecoins

MiCA introduces two categories of stablecoins with distinct regulatory treatment, and understanding this distinction is critical for any institution considering stablecoin capabilities.

E-Money Tokens (EMTs) are stablecoins pegged to a single fiat currency — the euro, for example. Under MiCA, EMTs can only be issued by authorized credit institutions or electronic money institutions. They require full reserve backing, meaning every token in circulation must be supported by equivalent liquid assets held in custody. This is essentially a digital extension of existing e-money regulation, but applied to blockchain-based tokens.

Asset-Referenced Tokens (ARTs) are stablecoins backed by a basket of assets — multiple currencies, commodities, or other crypto-assets. ARTs face stricter requirements, including authorization from a national competent authority, enhanced capital requirements, and more rigorous governance standards.

For most practical banking use cases — payments, settlements, cross-border transfers — EMTs are the relevant category. And here's the critical insight: any EU-licensed EMI or credit institution already holds the foundational license needed to issue EMTs. What they lack is the technology infrastructure to actually do it.

The Passporting Advantage: One License, 27 Markets

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of MiCA for EU-based institutions is passporting. A single CASP authorization or EMT issuance license obtained in one EU member state is valid across all 27 member states. This is a regulatory advantage that cannot be overstated.

Compare this to the United States, where crypto regulation remains fragmented across federal and state jurisdictions. Or to Asia, where each country — Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong — has its own distinct framework requiring separate authorization. MiCA creates a single market for crypto-assets in a way that mirrors what the EU achieved for traditional financial services years ago.

For core banking platforms serving EU clients, this means that a stablecoin issuance capability built once can be deployed across the entire European Economic Area. The addressable market isn't one country — it's a continent.

The transitional period for existing CASPs runs until July 1, 2026, meaning institutions that move now have a window to establish themselves before the regulatory landscape is fully settled. Those that wait risk finding the market already occupied by first movers.

Why Banks and EMIs Need Issuance Infrastructure

The current stablecoin market is dominated by a handful of issuers. Circle (USDC) and Tether (USDT) control the vast majority of stablecoin supply. Both are primarily US-oriented, and their dominance creates concentration risk for European financial institutions.

MiCA explicitly encourages a more distributed issuance model. European banks and EMIs can issue their own euro-denominated stablecoins, creating competition and reducing dependence on non-EU issuers. But to do so, they need infrastructure that most don't currently possess:

• Token lifecycle management — minting, burning, and managing the supply of stablecoins in response to demand
• Reserve management — maintaining and reporting on the 1:1 backing required by MiCA, with assets held in approved custodians
• Redemption processing — ensuring token holders can redeem stablecoins for fiat currency at par value at any time
• Compliance and reporting — meeting MiCA's whitepaper requirements, ongoing disclosures, and regulatory reporting obligations
• Integration with existing banking systems — connecting stablecoin operations with fiat accounts, payment rails (SEPA, SWIFT), and risk management systems

This last point is where core banking platforms become essential. Stablecoin issuance doesn't exist in isolation — it must integrate seamlessly with an institution's existing ledger, compliance infrastructure, and customer-facing systems. Building this integration from scratch is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for most institutions.

The PSD3 Bridge: Where Crypto Meets Payments

The regulatory convergence extends beyond MiCA. The Payment Services Directive 3 (PSD3) and Payment Services Regulation (PSR), which reached provisional political agreement in November 2025 and are expected to take effect around 2027, include a provision that could reshape the market.

Under PSD3, CASPs already authorized under MiCA will be subject to a streamlined procedure for obtaining payment services authorization. This creates a regulatory bridge between the crypto world and the traditional payments world — crypto-native firms will have an easier path to becoming licensed payment institutions, and they'll need core banking infrastructure to operate as such.

This creates a two-sided opportunity for core banking platforms:

• Existing bank clients wanting to add stablecoin capabilities to their payments and treasury operations
• Crypto-native firms — exchanges, custodians, stablecoin issuers — that need banking infrastructure as they expand into regulated payment services

The precedent is already visible. BCB Group, a UK-regulated crypto payment provider, chose Mambu for its core banking needs, specifically for SEPA connectivity and fiat account management. Deblock, a French crypto-native current account provider, similarly uses Mambu for payments infrastructure. These are early signals of a much larger wave.

The Competitive Landscape: Who's Building What

Surveying the current market reveals a clear gap. The major stablecoin platforms — Circle, Paxos, Tether — are issuers, not infrastructure providers. They issue their own stablecoins but don't provide issuance-as-a-service platforms for banks wanting to issue their own.

On the core banking side, the picture is equally revealing:

• Temenos relies on its partnership with Taurus for digital asset capabilities — a marketplace integration, not native functionality
• Mambu supports crypto as a currency type but relies on external partners for exchange and custody
• Thought Machine offers a joint solution with Metaco (now Ripple) for crypto custody and trading
• Skaleet has crypto payment acceptance and settlement capabilities
• Tuum, 10x Banking — minimal to no crypto capabilities

No major core banking vendor offers a comprehensive, native stablecoin issuance and management platform. The market is wide open.

Meanwhile, crypto infrastructure providers like Fireblocks have launched networks specifically for stablecoin payments — their Network for Payments includes 40+ providers including Circle, Paxos, and Sygnum. But these networks need core banking partners to connect to the fiat world.

What Core Banking Platforms Need to Deliver

For a core banking platform to credibly serve the stablecoin opportunity, several capabilities must come together:

Multi-asset ledger: The core ledger must natively support both fiat currencies and tokenized assets on a single system of record. Stablecoins cannot be treated as a separate, bolted-on asset class — they must be first-class citizens alongside euros, dollars, and traditional instruments.

Blockchain connectivity: Integration with major blockchain networks (Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, potentially Stellar and Avalanche) for token issuance and settlement. This can be achieved through partnerships with node providers like Taurus, Alchemy, or Infura.

Custody integration: Partnership with institutional-grade custody providers (Fireblocks, Taurus, BitGo) for secure key management. Building custody from scratch requires HSMs, MPC infrastructure, insurance, and deep security expertise — an investment of $10 million or more and 18+ months of development.

Compliance infrastructure: On-chain transaction monitoring (via Chainalysis, Elliptic, or TRM Labs), MiCA-compliant whitepaper generation, reserve reporting, and integration with existing AML/KYC systems.

DORA compliance: Since January 2025, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) requires all EU financial entities and their ICT providers to meet stringent operational resilience requirements. Blockchain nodes, HSMs, and key management systems are all ICT infrastructure subject to DORA — a compliance layer that many crypto providers have not yet addressed.

The EU Advantage

For EU-based core banking platforms, the opportunity is particularly compelling. Being domiciled in the EU provides inherent advantages:

• Regulatory proximity: Direct engagement with national competent authorities (in Italy, Consob and Banca d'Italia) for MiCA implementation guidance
• Data sovereignty: EU-based infrastructure naturally complies with GDPR and emerging data localization requirements
• Credibility with EU clients: Banks and EMIs operating under EU regulation prefer infrastructure providers subject to the same regulatory framework
• Post-Brexit opportunity: UK-based financial institutions that need EU-licensed partners for cross-border operations represent a significant addressable market

In December 2025, the US OCC approved Ripple, Circle, Paxos, BitGo, and Fidelity as crypto national trust banks — a significant step for the US market. But for EU institutions, the question isn't what's happening in Washington. It's whether their core banking infrastructure is ready for what MiCA has already made possible in Brussels.

The Window Is Open — But Not Forever

The convergence of MiCA's regulatory clarity, stablecoins' explosive growth, and the current gap in core banking infrastructure creates a time-limited opportunity. Institutions that build or adopt stablecoin capabilities during the MiCA transitional period (ending July 2026) will establish positions that are difficult for latecomers to challenge.

Japan's three largest banks — MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho — have already joined Project Pax for stablecoin-based cross-border payments. SMBC has partnered with Fireblocks and Ava Labs to pilot stablecoin launches. In Switzerland, Sygnum has onboarded 20+ banks for white-label crypto services, enabling regulated crypto for roughly a third of the Swiss population.

Europe has the regulatory framework. It has the institutional interest. What it needs is the infrastructure to connect the two.

At CoreFi, we believe core banking platforms have a unique role to play in this transformation. With native asset tokenization capabilities, a modular API-first architecture, and deep roots in EU-regulated financial services, we're building the infrastructure layer that enables banks and EMIs to participate in the stablecoin economy — not as spectators, but as issuers, managers, and innovators.

The stablecoin opportunity isn't coming. It's here. The question is whether your banking infrastructure is ready for it.

Ready to explore stablecoin and digital asset capabilities for your institution?

CoreFi provides modular core banking infrastructure with native tokenization, designed for EU-regulated financial institutions. Get in touch to discuss how we can help you prepare for the MiCA opportunity.