Who Owns the Rails? Europe's Ten-Bank Cooperative Blockchain and Visa's Full-Stack Play

Why a cooperative

Announced on July 28, 2026 from Frankfurt and Luxembourg, RL1 is a neutral, collaborative distributed ledger network built specifically for regulated financial markets. It has been incorporated as a European Cooperative Society (Société Coopérative Européenne) domiciled in Luxembourg and commenced operations the same day.

The founding members are ABN AMRO of the Netherlands, Cecabank of Spain, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale of France, DekaBank, DZ BANK and LBBW of Germany, Natixis CIB of France, SC Ventures and Seturion. KfW and L-Bank, German public development banks that have been members of the initiative since 2025 and 2026 respectively, will continue to support RL1. Concrete discussions are under way with several other prominent European banks, including NatWest, which participated actively in Phase 1.

The design principle at the centre of the arrangement is that governance rests exclusively with members on the basis of equal decision-making rights. The announcement states this ensures no single institution or group of node operators exercises undue control over the network. Whether the question concerns network development, technical upgrades or strategic direction, each participating bank holds the same vote.

Inherited track record, and the fragmentation Europe is trying to solve

RL1's infrastructure is the production-grade DLT network originally developed by SWIAT, a German fintech, with ownership now transferred to the cooperative. Founded in Frankfurt in 2022, SWIAT also operates regulated registry services for digital securities under Germany's Electronic Securities Act (eWpG). Its shareholders include DekaBank, LBBW, SC Ventures (Standard Chartered Bank) and the fintech Comyno.

Over three years in production prior to the transition to the cooperative model, the platform completed more than 50 institutional transactions with a total volume exceeding EUR 700 million (roughly 808 million US dollars). SWIAT's software is fully compatible with RL1, enabling immediate implementation of use cases such as bond tokenisation. SWIAT's existing application ecosystem, including its BaFin-supervised German electronic securities registries, remains with SWIAT but will transition to run on RL1.

RL1 targets regulated institutional activity: tokenised bonds, digital cash, collateral management and blockchain-based settlement. The announcement explicitly frames the launch against two developments: tokenisation progressing from pilot projects toward scalable market infrastructure, and the European Central Bank's Pontes and Appia initiatives. Pontes is the Eurosystem's short-term interoperability solution enabling settlement in central bank money on DLT platforms, with initial launch planned for the third quarter of 2026. Appia sets out the longer-term vision for an integrated ecosystem. RL1 can therefore be read as the private sector building its counterpart ahead of a public settlement anchor coming into place.

Visa: AI is remaking the front end, stablecoins the back end

In the same week, Visa reported fiscal third-quarter 2026 results. Net revenue reached 11.6 billion dollars, up 14% year over year, with non-GAAP earnings per share of 3.32 dollars, up 11%, both ahead of expectations. Quarterly payments volume surpassed 4 trillion dollars for the first time in company history, processed transactions rose 10% to 72 billion, and cross-border volume climbed 13%. Value-added services revenue grew 34% in constant dollars to 3.8 billion dollars, now roughly a third of total revenue. The company simultaneously announced workforce reductions concentrated in technology and product teams, recording 563 million dollars in severance costs.

The stablecoin strategy Visa described on the call extends well beyond its earlier settlement pilots. The company said it is investing in each layer of the stack, from blockchain to issuance, wallets, infrastructure and orchestration, and applications, with progress this quarter in the issuance and application layers specifically. Concretely, that meant joining the Open Standard consortium, which plans to issue the Open USD (OUSD) stablecoin for global money movement, and launching the Visa Stablecoin Platform, which lets financial institutions and payment partners mint, redeem, custody and move stablecoins. The platform provides on-chain wallet-as-a-service infrastructure and bank account connectivity, supporting OUSD first.

Notably, Visa declined to pick a winner. Management stated that its longer-term posture remains multi-coin and multi-chain, and its existing stablecoin settlement pilot now supports nine blockchains, reaching an annualised run rate of 7 billion dollars. The company further indicated it will build the technical foundation for banks to convert conventional deposits into programmable digital money, supporting phased migration from existing systems through its Pismo core banking platform, while retaining flexibility to accommodate third-party tokenised deposit providers. Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell has framed it as AI transforming the front end of commerce while stablecoins rebuild the back end.

Three governance models running in parallel

Set side by side, recent developments reveal three distinct governance models advancing simultaneously in tokenised financial infrastructure. First, the proprietary model owned and operated by a single bank, exemplified by J.P. Morgan's Kinexys. Second, the publicly convened neutral platform, represented by the BIS Project Agorá and the ECB's Pontes. Third, the industry-owned cooperative that RL1 has now demonstrated.

These are less competitors than answers to different questions. The proprietary model offers speed and integration quality but limits participation to one bank's client base. Public platforms are the most neutral but operate on longer timelines to commercial availability. The cooperative sits between the two, preserving private-sector implementation speed while avoiding dependence on a single company. RL1's stated aim of overcoming market fragmentation caused by divergent DLT networks reflects a reckoning with what happened when institutions each built their own ledger and ended up with islands that do not connect. Visa, meanwhile, belongs to none of the three and is positioning itself as the orchestration layer sitting above all of them.

Business Development Insights

1. The ownership structure of infrastructure has itself become a strategic decision for Japanese financial institutions. What RL1 demonstrates is not a binary choice between building your own platform and riding someone else's, but a third option: joint industry ownership. A cooperative structure granting equal voting rights to all members is an institutional answer to concerns about vendor lock-in and concentration of control, not a technical one. Several shared-infrastructure initiatives are advancing in Japan as well, and the evaluation criteria for joining should centre not on feature lists but on governance provisions: how votes are allocated, how transparently fees are set, and how portable data is on exit. Technology can be migrated later; governance structures cannot.
2. The revenue opportunity lies in the orchestration layer above the ledger, not the ledger itself. It is telling that Visa is investing from the blockchain layer through issuance, wallets, infrastructure and applications while explicitly committing to remain multi-coin and multi-chain. This mirrors the treasury orchestration argument made in the previous report, and the fact that a payments giant chose to stand above the competition rather than bet on which chain wins is significant. Japanese payment providers and banks should take a comparable position: rather than backing a single platform, invest in the connectivity, translation and control layer that presents multiple platforms as one to the business user. Risk-adjusted returns favour that placement.
3. Neutrality and interoperability are now procurement requirements, not technical preferences. That RL1's announcement explicitly referenced the ECB's Pontes and Appia signals that private infrastructure is now designed on the assumption that it must connect to a public settlement anchor. Visa's statement that it will preserve flexibility for third-party tokenised deposit providers follows the same logic. When Japanese companies select a tokenisation platform partner, three checks should be mandatory alongside functionality and pricing: the roadmap for connecting to public infrastructure, adherence to established standards, and a demonstrated record of interoperating with other platforms. A merely adequate platform that connects to others may well be worth more in five years than a high-performance one that stands alone.

Sources

• NADA NEWS, "Ten European financial institutions launch cooperatively operated blockchain RL1; Visa expands stablecoin infrastructure" https://www.nadanews.com/361599/
• Regulated Layer One, "European blockchain initiative 'Regulated Layer One' goes live", July 28, 2026 https://www.rl1.network/news/rl1-launch/
• European Central Bank, "Pontes" https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/target/pontes/html/index.en.html
• European Central Bank, "ECB to pilot DLT settlement for central bank money with dual-track strategy", July 1, 2025 https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr250701~f4a98dd9dc.en.html
• Payments Dive, "Visa outlines stablecoin strategy during Q3 earnings call" https://cryptonews.net/news/finance/33217176/
• crypto.news, "Visa Q3 revenue rises 14% as crypto push expands" https://crypto.news/visa-q3-revenue-rises-14-as-crypto-push-expands/
• The Crypto Times, "Visa Details Full-Stack Stablecoin Strategy as Q3 Revenue Hits $11.6B", July 29, 2026 https://www.cryptotimes.io/2026/07/29/visa-details-full-stack-stablecoin-strategy-as-q3-revenue-hits-11-6b/