Legally, yes. But it now means settling outside every protection EU law attaches to a stablecoin. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) does not prohibit a business from holding or transferring USDT. It does require a stablecoin’s issuer to be authorised in the EU, and Tether, the issuer of USDT, is not. Three things follow for anyone who settles payments in it: ESMA expected EU-licensed platforms to stop offering the token, the holder has no right under EU law to redeem it at par, and no EU supervisor stands behind its reserves. This guide sets out what the rules say, who is in the ESMA register, and what changes in a real settlement flow.
Is USDT banned in the EU?
No, and that is a narrower statement than it sounds. MiCA, Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, contains no provision that makes it unlawful for a person or a business to hold a stablecoin, or to send one to somebody else. Its rules for single-currency stablecoins, which it calls electronic money tokens (EMTs), are addressed to issuers and to the firms that provide services around the token.
Article 48 (opens in a new tab) sets the rule: nobody may offer an EMT to the public in the EU, or seek its admission to trading, unless they are the issuer and are authorised as a credit institution or an electronic money institution (EMI), with a white paper notified to their national authority. The obligation sits with the issuer. The holder is not mentioned.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) drew the same line when it told the market how to apply the rule. Its public statement of 17 January 2025 (opens in a new tab) says that “mere custody and transfer of these crypto-assets should remain possible”.
Holding USDT is not the regulated act. Issuing it, offering it and listing it are, and none of the three is open to an issuer outside the register.
What EU platforms had to stop doing with USDT
The scale of the question explains why regulators spelled it out. Two issuers, Tether and Circle, account for 87% of a stablecoin supply of more than 300 billion dollars (a16z, State of Crypto 2025 (opens in a new tab), October 2025). One of the two has notified white papers for its tokens in the EU. The other has not.
ESMA’s statement applies to any token that would qualify as an EMT but whose issuer is not authorised in the EU. For those tokens it set a timetable for crypto-asset service providers:
- Trading platforms were expected to stop making them available for trading.
- Brokers and exchange services, meaning the reception and transmission of orders, the execution of orders and the exchange of crypto-assets for funds or for other crypto-assets, were expected to stop where the service amounts to an offer to the public.
- Services that help clients acquire the token were to be restricted by the end of January 2025, with “sell only” services allowed to continue until the end of the first quarter of 2025 so that holders could exit in an orderly way.
The separate transitional period for the service providers themselves ended on 1 July 2026. A firm serving EU clients today does so under a MiCA licence, and that licence does not extend to offering a token whose issuer is outside the regime.
Who is in the ESMA register, and who is not
ESMA keeps a public register of EMT white papers (opens in a new tab), built from what each national authority notifies. It is the primary source for the question “is this stablecoin authorised in the EU?”, and it is a better one than any list that copies it, including this one.
As at 18 September 2026 the register listed 49 white papers from 24 issuers. Tether is not among them, and no white paper for USDT appears in it. The table sets USDT beside a selection of the tokens that do.
| Token | Issuer | Authorised as | Competent authority | In the ESMA register |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USDT | Tether | Not authorised | None | No |
| USDC | Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS | EMI | ACPR, France | Yes |
| EURC | Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS | EMI | ACPR, France | Yes |
| EURe | Monerium ehf | EMI | Central Bank of Iceland | Yes |
| EURCV | Société Générale - Forge | EMI | ACPR, France | Yes |
| USDCV | Société Générale - Forge | EMI | ACPR, France | Yes |
| EURSM | Stable mint Ltd | EMI | MFSA, Malta | Yes |
| USDSM | Stable mint Ltd | EMI | MFSA, Malta | Yes |
Source: ESMA register of EMT white papers, read on 18 September 2026. Authorised tokens are grouped by issuer, in alphabetical order of issuer. The selection is illustrative, not complete, and the register changes as authorities notify new entries. Check it directly before relying on any row.
What a USDT holder does not get
A register entry matters because of the obligations that come with it, all of them set by the regulation and none of them optional. MiCA Title IV attaches three to every authorised EMT. A holder of USDT has none of them.
A redemption right in law. Under Article 49 the holder of an EMT has a claim on the issuer. The issuer must redeem at any time and at par value, and redemption may not be subject to a fee. For a token issued outside the regime, redemption is a matter of the issuer’s own terms. Tether’s published fee schedule (opens in a new tab) sets a minimum redemption of 100,000 US dollars and a fee of the greater of 1,000 dollars or 0.1% per redemption.
Reserve rules. Article 54 requires the funds received for an EMT to be safeguarded, with at least 30% held as deposits at credit institutions and the remainder in secure, low-risk and highly liquid instruments. How the reserve of assets works is covered in a separate guide. A non-authorised issuer may hold strong reserves, but it does so by choice and under its own disclosure, not under an EU supervisor.
A supervisor. An authorised issuer answers to a national competent authority, and the European Banking Authority sets the technical standards it is measured against.
What changes in a settlement flow
Take a European marketplace that is paid 500,000 dollars in USDT by an overseas buyer and needs euros in its bank account to pay its sellers.
Receiving the tokens is the easy part. Three problems start when the marketplace has to turn them into money:
- The exit route is narrower: The EU-licensed platforms it would use to sell the tokens were expected to stop offering them to EU clients by the end of March 2025. The alternatives are a venue outside the EU or direct redemption with the issuer, on the issuer’s terms and minimums.
- The value in transit has no regulatory floor: Between receipt and conversion, the marketplace holds a claim that EU law does not define. There is no statutory right to par, and no EU-supervised reserve behind it.
- Its own licence or its partners’ licences notice: If the marketplace is itself regulated, or relies on a payment institution or an electronic money institution to move client funds, that firm has to explain to its supervisor why flows run through an instrument outside the authorised perimeter.
With an authorised EMT the same payment arrives as electronic money. It can be redeemed at par with the issuer and paid out to a bank account by a supervised institution. On-chain the two tokens do the same job. The difference appears at the moment the token has to become money again.
What this means for your business
If you receive or hold USDT today, you are carrying an exposure that EU law does not cover: no statutory redemption at par, no supervised reserve, and fewer regulated venues inside the EU to convert it. MiCA does not require you to stop. It has moved every protection to the tokens whose issuers are in the register.
The check is short. Look the token up in the ESMA register. If the issuer is there, the token sits inside the regime, with the rights described above. If it is not, decide deliberately how much value you are willing to hold in it, for how long, and how you convert it.
Stable Mint is authorised in the EU as an Electronic Money Institution and issues EURSM and USDSM as MiCA Title IV electronic money tokens, redeemable at par and listed in the register above. If you are moving a settlement flow from USDT to an authorised token and want to see how the payout leg works, talk to our team.