Lloyds Banking Group and Visa have completed their first live stablecoin settlement pilot, using USDC to settle $750,000 of cross-border payment obligations and testing whether blockchain-based money can reduce delays created by traditional banking hours.The seven-day pilot involved a series of real U.S. dollar settlement obligations rather than a laboratory simulation. Lloyds acquired the USDC through UK-regulated digital-asset exchange Archax, booked the settlement volume through its Corporate Markets branch in Jersey and transferred the funds to Visa in the United States.Funds reached Visa in under one hour, including transactions conducted over the weekend. Lloyds and Visa contrasted that with conventional cross-border settlement, which can take a day or longer when initiated outside banking hours.The companies described it as the first stablecoin settlement trial between Visa and a major UK banking group. It should not, however, be characterized as Visa’s first use of USDC: the payments company began experimenting with USDC settlement years earlier and launched U.S. institutional settlement using the stablecoin in 2025.
Lloyds Tests $750,000 of Live Obligations
The pilot focused specifically on settlement — the process through which financial institutions exchange funds to complete and reconcile payment activity — rather than using stablecoins for consumer payments.That distinction is important. Customers were not paying merchants in USDC. Instead, Lloyds was testing whether a stablecoin could perform part of the behind-the-scenes movement of money between financial institutions.The trial also tested interoperability between different blockchain environments.Lloyds operated its own node on Canton, using the network’s configurable privacy capabilities, while Visa supported settlement on a separate public blockchain. The companies said the arrangement demonstrated how institutions could operate across different networks rather than requiring all participants to adopt a single blockchain.Neither company identified the pilot as a commercial rollout or announced a date for broader deployment.
Stablecoins Target the Settlement Layer
The principal attraction for financial institutions is continuous settlement.Traditional payment systems can face cut-off times, weekends and holidays that leave funds in transit and force businesses to maintain additional liquidity while waiting for transactions to settle. Stablecoins can move on supported blockchain networks continuously.Lloyds said greater certainty around when funds arrive could improve liquidity management and reduce money tied up while settlement remains outstanding.Visa has been developing this model for several years. In 2021, Crypto.com sent USDC to Visa over Ethereum during an early settlement pilot. In December 2025, Visa expanded USDC settlement in the United States, initially working with Cross River Bank and Lead Bank over Solana. Visa said at the time its stablecoin settlement activity had reached more than $3.5 billion in annualized volume.Lloyds therefore represents a different milestone: a major traditional UK banking group directly testing live USDC settlement with Visa across borders and blockchain environments.The experiment also fits Lloyds’ broader work around digital assets and tokenized money, as banks increasingly investigate blockchain not simply as an investment market but as potential financial infrastructure.The $750,000 volume remains small relative to conventional bank settlement flows, and the companies have not committed to production deployment.But the pilot provides a concrete demonstration of the proposition being tested: a regulated bank acquired USDC, used it to settle live obligations with Visa across borders and moved the funds in under an hour even outside conventional banking hours.