European fintech company Revolut said on August 26 local time that it had begun a phased rollout of EURR, its first euro stablecoin, to selected eligible customers in Denmark, Poland and Portugal. EURR is a euro-pegged e-money token (EMT) designed to let users move between euros, crypto assets and external wallets within the Revolut app. The legal issuer is Bridge Building S.A., the Luxembourg entity of Bridge, which is owned by payments company Stripe. Bridge Building has been authorized by Luxembourg's Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) as a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) and an electronic money institution (EMI). Revolut Digital Assets Europe Ltd, which offers EURR to customers, is a CASP under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), authorized by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). EURR is not a bank deposit and is therefore not covered by deposit protection schemes. Holders can claim redemption at par only after passing Bridge Building's customer due diligence procedures and submitting the required documents along with a valid IBAN for a bank account in the European Economic Area, and the white paper states that such requests are processed within two business days at no fee. Reserve assets are managed by the issuer, Bridge Building, and are either held in segregated accounts at regulated financial institutions or invested in eligible highly liquid euro-denominated instruments. EURR currently operates on Ethereum and Polygon. Bridge's reserves page showed 374 EURR in circulation and 374 euros in reserve assets as of an update at 3:38 a.m. KST on August 26, with the reserve assets held entirely in deposits. Revolut plans to expand across the entire European Economic Area within this year, subject to product, operational and regulatory readiness, and to launch stablecoins based on other currencies as well. The rollout widens the point of contact between bank-style apps and on-chain euros, but the counterparty against which users claim redemption and the responsibility for managing reserve assets rest with Bridge Building, not Revolut.
Revolut Rolls Out EURR, Its First Euro Stablecoin: Issuance and Redemption Sit With Bridge
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Revolut creates the experience of sending euros on-chain from the same screen, but the obligation to redeem at par lies with Bridge Building. Even holders who receive EURR outside the Revolut app must go through Bridge Building's customer due diligence procedures in order to claim redemption directly from the issuer. Because issuance and redemption on one side and customer-facing distribution on the other are handled by separately authorized entities, the relevant supervisory authority may also differ depending on the issue at hand. In Korea's own discussion of a won-denominated stablecoin, there is a need to require that the legal basis for the authorization of issuers and distributors, the counterparty for redemption claims, and the eligibility conditions for redemption be disclosed separately.