Overview
- Visa has joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s BLOOM initiative and selected payments firm Nium to run a pilot that tests seven-day cross-border settlement using regulated U.S. dollar and euro-backed stablecoins.
- The experiment will target the settlement layer behind payments rather than customer payment initiation so banks can keep Visa’s network, security and compliance controls in place.
- The companies have not disclosed a launch date, expected transaction volumes, which specific tokens or blockchains will be used, or which other banks or acquirers will join the pilot.
- The pilot builds on Visa’s existing multi-coin, multi-chain settlement work and on Nium’s prior USDC payout integration with Coinbase; Visa already supports onchain settlement across multiple networks and reported roughly a $7 billion annualized stablecoin run rate.
- If the test succeeds, banks could get faster access to funds outside banking days and reduce the need for prefunded local balances, but wider adoption will depend on preserving privacy, auditability and existing compliance controls.