Lloyds and Visa Accelerate Cross-Border Payments with USDC Stablecoin
Lloyds Banking Group and Visa have successfully tested a new way to settle payments in real-time using the USDC stablecoin. The seven-day pilot, conducted from an unspecified date, involved settling $750,000 in payment obligations between the two companies with funds arriving within an hour, even on weekends.
The test focused on interbank settlement rather than customer transactions and aimed to determine whether stablecoins could speed up cross-border transfers and reduce reliance on traditional banking hours. Lloyds purchased USDC through Archax, a regulated digital asset platform in the UK, and transferred funds to Visa in the US using its own node on the Canton Network.
Lloyds' Head of Digital Assets Peter Left said that the experiment allowed the bank to move from theoretical exploration of the technology to settling real payment obligations. He highlighted stablecoins as particularly promising for cross-border transactions due to their potential to simplify liquidity management and reduce settlement times.