Visa has joined Singapore’s Monetary Authority-led BLOOM initiative and tapped cross-border payments firm Nium as its first partner for a pilot that will test seven-day settlement using regulated U.S. dollar- and euro-backed stablecoins across international payment flows. What they’re testing - The pilot will explore whether regulated dollar and euro stablecoins can be used to settle payment obligations every day of the week — including weekends and public holidays — removing the delays caused by settlement windows tied to traditional banking days. - Crucially, the work targets the settlement layer behind payments, not how customers initiate transactions. Visa and Nium will study ways to integrate stablecoin rails with Visa’s existing network, security and compliance controls so financial institutions can access funds faster while preserving the controls regulators expect. Why MAS’s BLOOM matters BLOOM, launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore in 2025, is a sandbox and framework for settlement systems built on tokenized bank liabilities and regulated stablecoins. It focuses on cross-border and domestic payments, multi-currency settlement and institutional uses such as corporate treasury, trade finance and automated payments. The program builds on MAS’s earlier Project Orchid trials of programmable money and has attracted participants including Circle, DBS, OCBC, Partior, Stripe and UOB. How this fits into broader work Visa’s involvement brings a global card network and a major cross-border payments partner into BLOOM, with a clear emphasis on interoperability between legacy payment infrastructure and stablecoin settlement rails. This follows other institutional-focused pilots that move beyond public onchain transfers — for example, a private test earlier this year that partnered Visa, Brale and the Canton Network to try a US dollar-backed SBC stablecoin while preserving privacy for sensitive settlement data. Nium’s role and prior stablecoin work Nium will plug its cross-border payout infrastructure into the trial. The company already runs a USDC payout integration with Coinbase that allows businesses to fund payouts with USDC and settle in stablecoins or local currency across more than 190 countries. That setup reduces the need for prefunded balances in each market, addressing liquidity constraints inherent in conventional cross-border systems. Under BLOOM, Nium’s chief risk officer Amaresh Mohan framed the effort as building infrastructure that connects established payment rails with programmable digital currencies. Visa’s multi-chain, multi-coin approach Visa has been expanding stablecoin settlement across multiple blockchains and assets rather than backing a single token. In April it added Base, Polygon, Canton, Arc and Tempo to an ecosystem that already included Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche and Stellar. The company reported an annualized stablecoin settlement run rate of about $7 billion at the time (a 50% increase quarter-over-quarter). By June, Visa said issuing banks in its onchain programs could already settle seven days a week, and it is working to extend that capability to acquirers. Visa supports stablecoins such as USDC and euro-backed EURC and describes its strategy as “multi-coin, multi-chain.” Regulatory and commercial implications Visa emphasizes that any integration must preserve “the security, resilience and compliance standards that underpin global commerce,” noting that different forms of money will need to interoperate across connected payment networks. For regulated institutions, the promise is faster access to funds, more programmable settlement flows, and the ability to manage settlement outside standard banking hours — without sacrificing auditability and confidentiality. Open questions Visa and Nium have not disclosed a launch timetable, expected volumes, or other participating financial institutions beyond themselves. The pilot’s outcomes will be watched closely: if successful, the project could accelerate institutional adoption of regulated stablecoins as a settlement layer, while testing how to keep compliance, privacy and resilience intact when linking traditional finance and crypto rails. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news