Visa and Lloyds Test Sub-Hour Cross-Border Settlement With USDC.

Lloyds Banking Group and Visa have completed a seven-day live pilot testing whether stablecoins can speed up cross-border settlement between financial institutions.

Lloyds used USDC purchased through Archax, a UK-regulated digital asset exchange, to settle a series of US dollar obligations with Visa. The settlement volume was booked through Lloyds’ Corporate Markets branch in Jersey before being transferred to Visa in the United States, the companies said.

Funds reached Visa in under an hour, including over the weekend. The companies said traditional cross-border settlement can take a day or more when initiated outside normal banking hours.

The pilot focused on settlement rather than the payment transaction itself. Settlement is the process through which financial institutions exchange funds to complete and reconcile payment activity.

Testing private and public chains

The test also examined whether stablecoin settlement could operate across different blockchain environments.

Lloyds used its own node on the Canton network, leveraging the network’s configurable privacy capabilities. Visa supported settlement on a separate public blockchain. The companies said the test demonstrated interoperability between private and public networks.

That matters because institutional digital-asset activity is unlikely to run on one blockchain alone. Banks and payment companies may use different networks for privacy, compliance, liquidity or operational reasons. A settlement model that works across those environments could give institutions more choice over where they hold and move digital value.

The pilot did not amount to a commercial rollout. Visa and Lloyds did not disclose a timetable for wider deployment or say how the model might be extended beyond the transactions tested.

Implications for treasury

The companies said round-the-clock settlement could give financial institutions better visibility over when funds arrive and reduce the amount of liquidity tied up while transactions wait for banking hours to reopen.

Peter Left, head of digital assets at Lloyds Banking Group, said:

“Stablecoins could be particularly valuable for cross-border payments, where moving money between markets, currencies and infrastructures can add time and complexity. Settling $750,000 of live payment obligations between Lloyds and Visa using stablecoins has allowed us to move beyond theory and test these capabilities in a real-world setting.”

He added: “We’re seeing how digital money could help make international payments faster, more transparent and more flexible for businesses. Greater visibility and certainty over the movement of funds can transform liquidity management, while interoperability between blockchain networks helps unlock future applications of digital money at scale.”

Rob Cameron, group country manager for the UK and Ireland at Visa, said:

“Businesses increasingly operate across borders and around the clock, but the infrastructure behind the movement of money has not always offered the same flexibility. This pilot with Lloyds shows how stablecoins can work alongside existing banking infrastructure to give financial institutions more choice over how and when they settle funds.”

The pilot forms part of Lloyds’ wider work on digital assets and tokenised forms of money. The US$750,000 value is modest compared with the scale of institutional settlement, but the trial moved the use case beyond a theoretical demonstration and into a live banking environment.