Europe is currently seen by many as a bright example of well-defined crypto regulation opening doors for banks and payment providers to move from stablecoin experimentation to operational adoption. Yet, despite undeniable MiCA implementation milestones and compliant euro stablecoins gaining ground, local industry players have a lot of obstacles to overcome to establish the crypto custody, settlement, compliance and reconciliation infrastructure needed to support 24/7 payments at scale.
In this interview with PaySpace Magazine Global, Myles Harrison, Chief Product Officer at AMINA Group, discusses how MiCA is reshaping competition in the euro stablecoin market, why regulatory clarity is not enough for robust stablecoin payment infrastructure, what makes cross-border payments an immediate institutional use case, and what banks need to build before stablecoins can support the next generation of agentic payments.
- Since MiCA has taken its full effect, Europe’s stablecoin landscape has shifted, with several non-compliant stablecoins no longer available on regulated platforms and USDC emerging as the primary dollar-pegged stablecoin. How has this changed the competitive landscape for euro stablecoin initiatives?
MiCA’s July 1 deadline cleared the field of stablecoins that could not meet e-money token requirements. What remains is a smaller but genuinely compliant euro stablecoin market that has more than doubled in market cap over the past year.
The more important shift is who is now in the market. Traditional banks like Société Générale are issuing stablecoins alongside crypto-native players, under the same rules. What was a conference talking point a year ago is now an operational reality.
On USDC dominance: the euro underpins a nineteen-trillion-euro economy, and yet euro stablecoins represent less than one percent of global stablecoin supply. The opportunity has barely been touched. MiCA gave it a regulatory floor, and the institutions moving in now have something to build on that simply was not there before.
- Now that Europe finally seems to have regulatory clarity in the crypto segment, what aspects should payment and banking providers focus on to move from stablecoin experimentation to the operational phase?
Regularity clarity is necessary, but it’s not enough. When we speak with payment and banking providers, the bottleneck is now operational readiness. Too many banks still approach stablecoins as an innovation project instead of asking where their existing clients have problems that stablecoins can solve.
Cross-border payments are the most obvious starting point. Settlement delays, intermediary costs, lack of transparency in correspondent banking are all complaints relationship managers hear. Stablecoins address these concerns directly, and the client doesn’t need to interact with blockchain infrastructure — or even know they’re engaging with stablecoins — to benefit.
Most banks do not know that they don’t need to build this themselves. The capital expenditure, 24/7 operational model, and the specialist talent required make this resource intensive. It doesn’t make sense for most institutions to develop this in-house. Partner with a regulated infrastructure provider, keep control of your client relationship and compliance standards, and scale based on what you actually see working.
- What are the main bottlenecks in existing payment infrastructure that might prevent crypto settlement from scaling?
Three main bottlenecks stand out. First is the on-ramp and off-ramp problem. You can settle a stablecoin transaction in seconds, but if it still takes a day or more to convert between fiat and crypto at either end, the payment experience has not actually improved. The speed of the blockchain is irrelevant if the fiat connections are slow.
Secondly, compliance infrastructure, such as AML screening, sanction checks, and transaction monitoring, are mostly still manual. They’re inconsistent across jurisdictions and are built for batch processing. Crypto settles in real time, but the compliance layer has not caught up. And until it does, institutions will slow transactions down to match their controls.
The third has to do with reconciliation. Banks run on legacy ledgers that weren’t designed to talk to blockchain-based systems. Every stablecoin transaction that touches a traditional bank still needs to be reconciled against internal records, reported to regulators, and accounted for under existing frameworks. This is where most operational delays actually sit.
- Programmable money like stablecoins appears to be the fastest way to move forward not only for more seamless cross-border transactions but also emerging agentic payments. How prepared are European banks for this next wave of innovation, and what are the capability gaps to be plugged before these agentic use cases can become mainstream?
Most European banks are still working through the basics of stablecoin custody and settlement. Agentic payments are moving fast, but they sit a layer above where most banks are today. You need identity and authorisation frameworks for non-human actors, compliance checks that operate at machine speed, and settlement rails that never switch off. Very few European banks are close to ready for any of that.
But the sequence matters. The banks that get stablecoin operations right now will have the infrastructure in place when agentic use cases move from pilot to production. The ones still treating stablecoins as an innovation project will be playing catch-up on two fronts at once.
- When we speak of Europe, we mostly mean the EU, but what about other European countries, like Ukraine, for example? Despite high crypto adoption levels, Ukraine has not introduced a MiCA-equivalent regulatory framework. What do you believe is the viable path for such a market to adopt effective crypto regulation and institutionalize its grassroot crypto enthusiasm?
Ukraine’s grassroots crypto adoption is real and it is one of the most active markets in the world. We do not operate in Ukraine, so we are not in a position to comment on what the right regulatory path should be.
- Besides Europe, AMINA Group also has offices and operates in the UAE and Hong Kong. All those countries have different levels and types of crypto regulation and banking infrastructure. How do you assess the readiness of these markets to operationalise stablecoins at institutional scale, and what lessons can they learn from one another?
The regulatory emphasis in each jurisdiction tells you something about how that market thinks about finance. In the UAE, where we hold an FSRA Financial Services Permission in ADGM, the approach is infrastructure-first. You have the Central Bank’s payment token framework running alongside VARA and ADGM, and AED-backed stablecoins are already in production. The priority is to embed digital assets into the commercial payment layer as quickly as the compliance framework allows.
Hong Kong’s approach is more institutionally anchored. We were the first international banking group to receive the SFC Type 1 license uplift for crypto, and the Stablecoins Ordinance has been in effect since last August. The first licensed stablecoin issuers are bank-backed, which signals that Hong Kong sees stablecoins as an extension of its existing financial system rather than a parallel one. The different approaches just reflect different regulatory philosophies about where trust should sit.
- Could you name three most important capabilities financial institutions should develop today to be best positioned for scaling stablecoin opportunities in the future?
First, compliant custody and settlement infrastructure that works around the clock. Stablecoins do not observe banking hours, and institutions that want to offer them cannot either. Second, compliance (AML, sanctions screening, and transaction monitoring) that can operate at the speed of on-chain settlement rather than in overnight batches. Third, the partnerships to make it work. Most banks will not and should not build this stack from scratch. The capability that matters most is knowing what to build internally and what to access through a regulated infrastructure partner.
