The European Banking Authority said Tuesday it has classified Circle's USDC as the European Union's first significant e-money token under the bloc's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, pulling the stablecoin's EU issuer into a tighter supervisory regime than the one it currently operates under. USDC is the first of 45 e-money tokens notified under MiCA to receive the designation, the EBA said in its press release.
The shift takes effect November 12, when direct supervisory responsibility over the issuer's own funds, reserve assets, liquidity requirements, and recovery and redemption plans transfers from France's Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution, known as the ACPR, to the EBA. The affected entity is Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS, which began MiCA-compliant issuance from France in July 2024 after securing an electronic money institution licence from the ACPR.
A split supervisory arrangement, not a full handover
MiCA sets up what the EBA calls dual supervision for tokens that reach significant status, and the split is specific rather than total. The EBA takes charge of capital, reserves, liquidity, and recovery and redemption plans. The ACPR keeps authority over governance, qualifying holdings, fit and proper assessments of management, outsourcing arrangements, and conflicts of interest.
"The ACPR will continue to be responsible for supervision of areas such as governance, qualifying holdings, fit and proper assessment, outsourcing and conflicts of interest," the EBA stated, adding that the two regulators "will work closely together to ensure a smooth transition and effective supervisory cooperation."
For holders in the EU, including businesses and DeFi users who settle transactions in USDC, the practical change centers on who checks that the issuer can actually meet redemption demands. MiCA already grants e-money token holders a legal claim against the issuer and a right to redeem at par value. Significant status does not convert USDC into anything resembling a bank deposit. E-money tokens stay outside EU deposit-guarantee schemes regardless of this classification, so the protection holders gain here is supervisory scrutiny, not a government-backed insurance fund.
What the stricter capital and reserve rules actually require
MiCA's Article 58 lays out a separate financial rulebook for institutions issuing significant tokens, replacing parts of the ordinary e-money framework that would otherwise apply. Capital requirements are set at 3% of average reserve assets, with room for the EBA to demand more after supervisory risk assessments or stress tests. Reserve assets must sit legally and operationally separate from the issuer's own balance sheet, restricted to highly liquid instruments carrying minimal market, credit and concentration risk, and independent reserve audits are required every six months starting from the date of the significance decision.
Liquidity rules require the issuer to maintain a policy built to handle redemption requests even under stress conditions, backed by regular liquidity stress testing, with the EBA able to tighten those requirements depending on results. Capital adjustments run on a separate clock from the supervisory handover itself. Under EU technical rules, the national authority has 25 working days from the significance notification to tell the issuer its adjustment timetable, and the issuer then gets up to six months from that notice to complete the change. The EBA's announcement did not specify Circle's individual deadline.
MiCA's quarterly reporting framework already applies to tokens denominated in non-EU currencies regardless of significance status, which means USDC was filing data on holder numbers, reserve size and transaction activity with regulators well before this classification. Significant status adds the EBA as a second recipient of that same reporting pipeline rather than creating an entirely new disclosure obligation from scratch, and crypto-asset service providers remain on the hook to supply issuers with the data needed to compile those reports.
Why USDC crossed the threshold first
The EBA assesses tokens for significance annually under criteria set out in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1506, measuring factors that typically include the size of a token's holder base, transaction volume and total reserve value. USDC's scale put it over that line before any of the other 44 notified e-money tokens in the bloc, a gap that tracks with USDC's position as one of the two largest dollar-pegged stablecoins globally by market capitalization, alongside Tether's USDT.
That comparison carries weight precisely because USDT has not pursued MiCA compliance in the EU to the same degree, and several European exchanges delisted USDT trading pairs for EU customers through 2024 and 2025 as MiCA's transition deadlines tightened. USDC's earlier move to secure an EMI licence through its French entity positioned it as the more MiCA-aligned option among major dollar stablecoins operating in Europe, which likely explains why it reached significant status well ahead of any competitor.
Because USDC is issued both in the EU, through Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS, and in the United States, through Circle Internet Financial, LLC, the EBA has signed a memorandum of understanding with the New York State Department of Financial Services. The agreement is meant to support cooperation and information exchange between the two regulators over cross-border stablecoin activity, an arrangement that matters given how freely USDC moves between US and EU markets through the same underlying token structure.
Separately, issuers of significant asset-referenced tokens, MiCA's other major stablecoin category, fall under full EBA supervision rather than the dual model applied here, a distinction tied to how Article 117 of the regulation separates the two token types.
Anastasiia G
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