Lloyds Banking Group and Visa have completed a live stablecoin settlement pilot, testing the use of USDC to accelerate cross-border payments and reduce delays associated with traditional banking hours.
The seven-day pilot involved $750,000 in real U.S. dollar payment obligations, with Lloyds using the USDC stablecoin to settle funds with Visa in the United States. According to Lloyds, the funds reached Visa in under one hour, including transactions processed over the weekend.
Lloyds acquired the USDC through Archax, a UK-regulated digital asset exchange, before booking the settlement volume through Lloyds Corporate Markets in Jersey and transferring the funds to Visa.
The companies described the project as the first stablecoin settlement trial between Visa and a major UK banking group. The pilot was designed to examine whether blockchain-based settlement could provide financial institutions with greater speed, visibility and flexibility when moving money across borders.
The initiative also tested interoperability between different blockchain environments. Lloyds operated through the Canton Network, while Visa supported settlement through a separate public blockchain infrastructure, demonstrating how institutions may potentially exchange digital money without relying on a single blockchain network.
One of the main areas explored was round-the-clock settlement. Traditional cross-border payment processes can be affected by banking cut-off times, weekends and holidays, which may leave funds pending and require businesses to maintain additional liquidity.
By enabling settlement outside normal banking hours, stablecoin-based infrastructure could potentially give companies greater certainty over when payments arrive and improve liquidity management.
The pilot, however, remains an experimental initiative. Lloyds and Visa have not announced a commercial launch or a timetable for broader deployment.
The project reflects growing interest among major banks and payment companies in using blockchain and tokenised money as part of mainstream financial infrastructure, particularly in areas such as cross-border settlement and institutional payments.
