Lloyds Banking Group and Visa have completed a seven-day live pilot using USDC to settle $750,000 in payment obligations between the two companies, testing whether a regulated bank and a global card network can move funds across borders outside conventional banking hours.
Lloyds said the USDC transfers reached Visa in under an hour, including during the weekend. The result contrasts with traditional cross-border settlement processes, which the bank said can take a day or longer when payment instructions are initiated outside normal operating hours.
The pilot concerned institutional settlement between Lloyds and Visa rather than consumer card payments or transfers by bank customers. Its focus was the movement of funds owed between the two firms, a use case where delays can tie up corporate liquidity and force treasury teams to hold larger buffers across currencies and jurisdictions.
USDC used in the test was acquired through Archax, a UK-regulated digital asset exchange. Lloyds booked the dollar-denominated settlement volume through its Corporate Markets branch in Jersey before transferring the funds to Visa in the United States.
A test of cross-border settlement outside banking hours
The trial places stablecoins in a narrowly defined but commercially relevant part of the payments chain: settlement between large financial institutions. Stablecoins can be transferred continuously on blockchain networks, while parts of the established correspondent-banking system remain dependent on banking-day cutoffs, local operating schedules and sequential processing across institutions.
Lloyds’ test does not indicate that it is replacing existing cross-border payment rails. The limited $750,000 pilot instead provides a live operational example of a bank using a dollar-backed token for an obligation to a major payments company. Scaling such arrangements would require banks to address liquidity management, compliance controls, accounting treatment and the legal finality of settlement across the relevant jurisdictions.
The test also involved two blockchain environments. Lloyds ran its own node on the Canton Network, a privacy-focused blockchain system designed for financial-market activity. Visa supported settlement on a separate, unnamed public blockchain, according to Lloyds.
That structure illustrates a central challenge for institutional blockchain adoption. Financial firms often want permissioned access and confidential transaction data, while public networks provide broad liquidity and established stablecoin infrastructure. Moving value between those models requires technical and legal arrangements that keep transaction information appropriately restricted while allowing the asset to reach its intended destination.
Visa expands its stablecoin settlement work
Visa has steadily expanded its stablecoin settlement program beyond its initial blockchain connections. The company said its stablecoin settlement volume surpassed a $20 billion annualized run rate last month.
An annualized run rate extrapolates recent processing activity over a full year and does not represent the amount already settled during the calendar year. Even so, Visa’s figure indicates that stablecoin settlement has progressed beyond isolated proofs of concept within its own network.
In April, Visa added Canton and four other blockchain networks to its settlement pilot, bringing the total number of supported networks to nine. The expansion gives Visa more options to connect with financial institutions and payment providers that may use different blockchain infrastructure.
For Lloyds, the Visa pilot extends work already underway in the United Kingdom. The bank was among six major UK banks that began a live pilot of tokenized sterling deposits last year. Tokenized deposits represent commercial-bank money recorded on digital ledgers, rather than a stablecoin issued by a separate entity and backed by reserve assets.
Using USDC for an overseas obligation adds a different dimension. It allows Lloyds to examine how a widely used dollar stablecoin could operate alongside tokenized bank deposits, particularly where a foreign counterparty already accepts settlement in that asset.
Stablecoin supply has grown alongside payment use cases
The test comes as stablecoin supply and recorded transaction activity have continued to rise. Alvarez & Marsal said the total supply of pegged digital tokens reached $303 billion at the end of August 2026.
The consulting firm also reported that everyday business transfers accounted for $153 billion of recorded stablecoin payments during the first eight months of 2026. Those figures cover a broad category of activity and should not be read as a measure of bank-to-bank settlement alone. Blockchain transaction records can include transfers associated with trading, liquidity management and movement between wallets, alongside payments for goods and services.
Even so, pilots such as the Lloyds-Visa test are aimed at a more measurable institutional problem than speculative token activity: how to settle obligations quickly when the legacy system is closed or processing windows have passed.
The ability to send a token on a weekend does not by itself eliminate all constraints around cross-border money movement. A bank still needs access to the stablecoin, appropriate controls around wallet addresses and sanctions screening, and a method for managing exposure to the token’s issuer and its reserve arrangement. The recipient also needs a process for holding, converting or reusing the asset.
Lloyds’ pilot suggests that those operational elements can be coordinated between two major financial firms for a live transfer. The next test for the model will be whether institutions can repeat the process at higher volumes, across more currencies and with settlement arrangements that fit existing treasury, compliance and regulatory requirements.
Explore how real banks are adopting stablecoins in practice—read this in-depth stablecoin settlement analysis next.
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