- Lloyds Banking Group and Visa completed a seven-day live pilot that used USDC to settle $750,000 worth of cross-border payment obligations.
- Funds reached Visa in the United States in less than an hour, even on weekend days, while traditional settlement can take a day or longer outside banking hours.
- Lloyds acquired USDC through Archax and ran its own node on Canton Network, while Visa supported settlement on a separate public blockchain.
- The trial tested institutional settlement rather than customer payments, and it left open questions about cost, scale, network choice and whether Visa converted or held the USDC.
Lloyds Banking Group and Visa have run a live stablecoin trial that lasted seven days and moved $750,000 worth of cross-border payment obligations using USDC. The money reportedly arrived at Visa in the United States within 60 minutes, and the same was true on weekend days, when conventional bank settlement rails are often unavailable or slower.
The exercise was not about changing how shoppers or businesses pay with a card. It focused on the back-end settlement between two financial institutions: Lloyds’ Corporate Markets branch in Jersey booked the obligation, USDC was obtained through Archax, and the stablecoin was sent to Visa in the US. In other words, the customer-facing payment experience stayed the same while the plumbing underneath was tested.
What the seven-day USDC pilot actually involved
During the trial, Lloyds used USDC purchased via Archax, a digital asset exchange regulated in the UK, to settle real US dollar obligations with Visa. The settlement flow started at Lloyds’ Corporate Markets branch in Jersey and ended with Visa in the United States. Existing banking and card-network infrastructure remained in place; USDC was inserted into the settlement process rather than replacing the whole system.
Lloyds also ran its own node on Canton Network, relying on the network’s configurable privacy features. Visa, meanwhile, supported settlement on a separate public blockchain. That setup let the two companies examine whether stablecoin settlement can work when institutions are not all operating on the same chain, an interoperability question that matters for broader bank adoption.
Reports did not identify the public blockchain used by Visa, nor did they say how many individual transactions made up the $750,000 total. It is also unclear whether Visa converted the USDC to fiat after receipt or kept it on-chain. Those gaps matter because they affect how the pilot might translate into a repeatable settlement model.
Why the weekend and the clock mattered
Traditional cross-border settlement can take a day or longer when a transaction starts outside normal banking hours. In this pilot, funds reached Visa in less than 60 minutes, even on weekend days. For corporate treasury teams, that difference can mean less cash sitting idle while a payment is in limbo, especially on holidays or weekends when legacy systems are closed.
Lloyds said the structure could give institutions a clearer picture of where funds are and more predictable arrival times. The bank framed faster settlement as a way to reduce the amount of liquidity that has to wait around for transactions to complete. That is a practical concern for companies moving money across markets, currencies and financial infrastructures.
Peter Left, head of digital assets at Lloyds Banking Group, described the effort as a way to test the concept in live conditions rather than only on paper by handling live payment obligations with stablecoins. In his view, digital money could make international payments faster, more transparent and more flexible for businesses while giving them greater certainty over fund movements. The pilot’s scale, though, was limited: $750,000 over seven days is enough to test a live workflow, not to prove cost savings or reliability at high volume.
Private and public blockchains in the same settlement test
The cross-chain element was central. Lloyds used Canton’s privacy-oriented environment, while Visa settled on a different public blockchain. The companies wanted to see whether stablecoin settlement could function without making every participant use the same network. That kind of interoperability is often cited as a prerequisite for connecting banks, payment firms and corporate clients that already run on different systems.
Visa has been building stablecoin settlement capabilities for a while. Before the Lloyds trial, the card network had run an earlier private stablecoin settlement trial with Brale using the SBC dollar-backed stablecoin on Canton Network. That earlier proof of concept explored whether institutions could settle on-chain while keeping sensitive transaction data restricted. Visa has also supported USDC settlement on public blockchains and, according to one report, its stablecoin card network had surpassed 160 programs by September, with some participants using USDC to meet Visa settlement obligations every day of the week.
Lloyds, for its part, has explored other forms of digital money on Canton. It took part in live tokenized deposit transactions with Barclays and NatWest as UK banks tested blockchain-based payments using commercial bank money. It also issued tokenized sterling deposits on Canton and used them to buy a tokenized UK government bond from Archax, and later completed three live transactions under the Bank for International Settlements-led Project Agorá involving sterling, euros and Swiss francs. The Visa pilot took a different path by using USDC, which is issued by Circle and backed by reserves held outside the banking deposit represented by the token.
What the trial does and does not show
The pilot shows that Lloyds and Visa could settle a defined set of live obligations using USDC across separate blockchain environments and outside standard banking hours. It does not show that all banks, payment networks or corporate clients can use the same route, nor does it establish that the model works at large scale. Fees and the cost of acquiring USDC through Archax were not disclosed, and the pages reviewed did not detail liquidity impacts or network choice at volume.
Rob Cameron, Visa’s group country manager for the UK and Ireland, said the pilot demonstrated that stablecoins can work with the banking rails already in place and give institutions more choice over when and how they settle funds. That is a narrower claim than saying stablecoins will replace current payment rails. The experiment kept the existing banking and Visa infrastructure in place while introducing USDC into one part of the settlement chain.
Stablecoins are increasingly being discussed as a settlement option for banks, card networks and corporate treasury teams rather than only as a crypto-native payment tool. For banks, a stablecoin route could offer another way to pursue 24/7 cross-border settlement without requiring every institution to share the same blockchain. For card networks, stablecoins can sit behind existing payment activity as an additional settlement asset. For treasuries, they can provide an external settlement instrument that works outside banking hours, provided the compliance, liquidity and interoperability questions are solved.
Other projects are testing adjacent models. JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo have worked through The Clearing House on a shared settlement network meant to let corporate clients move tokenized deposits around the clock, with the project targeting the first half of 2027. Canton has also attracted stablecoin initiatives, including World Liberty Financial’s USD1 launch on the network. In another example, SBI Digital Practice and South Korea’s Nodeinfra agreed to develop a cross-border settlement network connecting Japan and South Korea through Canton, initially using yen and won test tokens before any planned use of regulated stablecoins. Visa has also pursued institutional partnerships outside the UK, including an August agreement with South Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group covering stablecoin issuance, transfers and redemption, with planned tests in card payment settlement.
The Lloyds-Visa pilot may be remembered less for its size than for where it placed USDC: between a major commercial bank and a global card network, with a regulated exchange in the middle and two different blockchain environments on either side. The trial did not answer every question about cost, scale or what happens to USDC after receipt. It did show that a live cross-border obligation can be booked in Jersey, converted into USDC through Archax and delivered to Visa in the US in under an hour, even when banks would normally be closed.
