Visa and Lloyds Test Stablecoin Settlement for Faster Cross-Border Payments
Visa and Lloyds Banking Group have completed a live trial of stablecoin-based settlement, testing how it can speed up and make cross-border transactions more transparent.
The pilot used USDC stablecoins to settle $750,000 in payment obligations between the two companies over seven days. This process is typically slower under traditional cross-border payment processes, which can take a day or more outside of banking hours.
Lloyds purchased USDC through Archax, a UK-regulated digital asset exchange, and then transferred it to Visa in the US. The funds reached Visa in under an hour, including during the weekend.
The pilot demonstrated the potential for stablecoins to operate across different blockchain networks, with Lloyds using its own node on Canton and Visa supporting settlement on a separate public blockchain.