PNC Launches USDC Payment Pilot for Corporate and Institutional Clients via Coinbase
Key Takeaways
- •USDC payments received through the pilot are automatically converted into US dollars and deposited into designated PNC accounts.
- •The service uses Coinbase Payments products on the Ethereum blockchain and is available to eligible corporate and institutional clients.
- •PNC has not provided fees, settlement-time data or the number of participating clients, leaving its performance unmeasured against traditional cross-border payments.
- •The pilot extends a July 2025 PNC-Coinbase partnership that previously supported Bitcoin trading for eligible PNC Private Bank clients.
- •USDC had a market capitalization of $70.5 billion, while the overall stablecoin market was valued at about $290.8 billion on Monday.
PNC Bank, the eighth-largest bank in the United States by assets, has launched a limited pilot program allowing eligible corporate and institutional clients to receive payments in USDC through Coinbase, according to an official announcement.
Under the pilot, USDC — a US dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Circle — is accepted on the Ethereum blockchain using Coinbase Payments products. Incoming stablecoin payments are automatically converted into US dollars and deposited into designated PNC accounts, meaning businesses can accept stablecoins without holding them. Because the conversion happens automatically at receipt, clients can serve counterparties paying in digital dollars while their funds land as ordinary dollar deposits in existing accounts, without managing crypto holdings themselves.
PNC said the service is designed to speed up access to funds and improve the efficiency of cross-border payments. The bank did not disclose fees, settlement-time benchmarks or the number of clients participating in the pilot, and it did not respond to Cointelegraph's request for additional details by publication time — omissions that leave the pilot's real-world performance against conventional cross-border payment methods unmeasured for now.
The initiative builds on a partnership established in July 2025, when PNC agreed to offer cryptocurrency services through Coinbase's infrastructure while providing banking services to the exchange. That arrangement led to the launch of Bitcoin (BTC) trading for eligible PNC Private Bank clients in December. With the stablecoin pilot, the partnership now extends beyond client-facing crypto trading into the bank's payment operations for corporate and institutional customers.
PNC's move follows a similar initiative by Citi, which expanded its Coinbase partnership in September to enable institutional clients to accept stablecoin payments through its Spring by Citi platform, with Coinbase converting the payments into fiat currency. Two major US banks have now built stablecoin acceptance for corporate clients on the same Coinbase infrastructure, layering digital-dollar payments into mainstream corporate banking.
USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, at $70.5 billion, behind Tether's USDT at $176.8 billion, according to DefiLlama data. The total stablecoin market stood at around $290.8 billion on Monday.
