Lloyds and Visa settle $750,000 in USDC in a live cross-border pilot

Lloyds Banking Group and Visa have completed a seven-day live pilot using stablecoins to settle cross-border payment obligations. Over a series of real transactions, Lloyds used USDC to settle $750,000 owed to Visa.

The settlement volume was booked through Lloyds' Corporate Markets branch in Jersey and transferred to Visa in the United States. The funds reached Visa in under an hour, including over the weekend, when conventional settlement initiated outside banking hours can take a day or more. Lloyds bought the USDC through Archax, the UK-regulated digital asset exchange.

The two sides tested interoperability across networks: Lloyds ran its own node on Canton, using the network's configurable privacy features, while Visa supported settlement on a separate public blockchain.

Peter Left, Head of Digital Assets at Lloyds Banking Group, said the test focused on settlement rather than on how payments are made, and that stablecoins could cut the time and complexity of moving money between markets, currencies and infrastructures.