Visa has joined Singapore's BLOOM initiative, a program led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), to pilot stablecoin-based settlement together with Singapore-based cross-border payments firm Nium. Nium is the first partner Visa has selected under the BLOOM framework for the pilot.

The pilot will test whether regulated stablecoins backed by the U.S. dollar and the euro can settle payment obligations seven days a week, including on weekends and public holidays. Traditional settlement is tied to banking days, creating gaps where institutions cannot complete parts of the process. Visa and Nium will examine how stablecoin settlement can reduce delays and give financial institutions faster access to funds. The focus on U.S.-dollar- and euro-backed tokens parallels the stablecoin rulebooks now in place in those currency areas: the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation took full effect at the end of 2024, and the United States enacted the GENIUS Act, a federal framework for payment stablecoins, in July 2025.

The pilot focuses on the settlement layer behind payments rather than on how customers initiate transactions. According to Visa, stablecoins could make payment flows more programmable and allow institutions to manage settlement outside normal banking hours.

The announcement follows Visa's July fiscal third-quarter earnings, in which the company reported $11.63 billion in quarterly net revenue, with payment volume and processed transactions each rising 10% year over year.

Visa's Expanding Stablecoin Infrastructure

Visa already operates stablecoin settlement infrastructure across nine blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Stellar, Base, Polygon, Canton, Arc and Tempo. The company reported an annualized stablecoin settlement run rate of around $7 billion as of April, up 50% from the prior quarter.

By June, Visa said issuing banks in its onchain programs could already settle seven days a week. The company has also been working to extend that capability to acquirers, which handle funds on behalf of merchants after card transactions clear.

During Visa's July earnings call, CEO Ryan McInerney described the company's stablecoin approach as "multi-coin, multi-chain," saying Visa does not plan to back a single stablecoin. The BLOOM pilot fits that approach, with no single token identified for use yet.

Adeline Kim, Visa's group country manager for Regional Southeast Asia, said the future of payments depends on how different forms of money work together. "The future of payments will be shaped by how different forms of money and payment networks work together for different use cases," Kim said.

Nium's Role and BLOOM's Broader Scope

For Nium, the pilot follows its April integration of USDC payouts via Coinbase, which brought stablecoin-based cross-border payments to its network covering more than 190 countries. USDC is issued by Circle, which is also among BLOOM's participants. That setup lets businesses fund payouts using USDC and settle in either stablecoins or local currencies, without maintaining prefunded balances in each market.

Amaresh Mohan, Nium's chief risk and compliance officer, said the BLOOM work is building infrastructure that connects traditional payment networks with stablecoin rails.

BLOOM was introduced by MAS in 2025 and includes participants such as Circle, DBS, OCBC, Partior, Stripe and UOB. It builds on Project Orchid, MAS's earlier work on programmable money, which followed Project Ubin, the central bank's 2016-2017 experiments with distributed-ledger interbank settlement. A separate BLOOM test announced in March involved Ripple and supply-chain finance firm Unloq using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger to test a trade-finance settlement system tied to shipment verification.

Visa and Nium have not disclosed a launch date, expected transaction volume, or which other financial institutions may join the pilot beyond the two companies.

Source: CoinCentral