Visa is expanding its stablecoin strategy in Asia by joining Singapore’s BLOOM initiative and selecting cross-border payments company Nium as its first partner for a new stablecoin settlement pilot.
The initiative will explore whether regulated U.S. dollar- and euro-backed stablecoins can help financial institutions settle payment obligations seven days a week, including weekends and public holidays.
Unlike consumer-facing crypto payment experiments, the pilot focuses on the infrastructure behind transactions. Visa and Nium want to determine whether stablecoins can make cross-border settlement faster and more flexible while maintaining the security, compliance, and risk controls used by traditional payment networks.
Visa Joins Singapore’s BLOOM Initiative
BLOOM is an initiative led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore designed to explore how tokenized bank liabilities and regulated stablecoins can work alongside existing financial infrastructure.
Visa’s participation adds one of the world’s largest payment networks to the program.
Under the pilot, Visa will work with Nium to test how traditional payment systems can connect with stablecoin settlement rails without abandoning existing compliance and security requirements.
Nium will serve as Visa’s first partner for a stablecoin settlement test conducted under BLOOM.
The companies have not yet disclosed which specific stablecoins will be used. However, the initial scope will include regulated stablecoins backed by the U.S. dollar and euro.
Pilot Targets Seven-Day Stablecoin Settlement
A major goal of the project is to enable settlement throughout the entire week.
Traditional financial settlement is often linked to banking hours and business days. As a result, transactions made during weekends or public holidays may face delays before financial institutions can complete certain settlement processes.
Stablecoins operate on blockchain networks that can remain available around the clock.
Visa and Nium will test whether this infrastructure can allow financial institutions to settle obligations outside conventional banking hours and gain faster access to funds.
The change would primarily affect the settlement layer behind payments rather than the way consumers make purchases.
Customers could continue using familiar payment methods while stablecoins potentially operate behind the scenes between participating institutions.
Stablecoins Could Make Payment Infrastructure More Programmable
Visa believes stablecoins could complement existing payment infrastructure rather than replace it entirely.
Blockchain-based settlement can allow transactions to take place continuously and can support programmable financial processes.
For financial institutions, this could provide greater control over when settlement takes place and how liquidity is managed.
Visa’s Regional Southeast Asia executive Adeline Kim said the future of payments will increasingly depend on different forms of money and different payment networks working together.
The company’s approach suggests it views stablecoins as another settlement option that can be integrated with existing financial infrastructure.
Security, regulatory compliance, resilience, and risk management remain central requirements for Visa as it expands its blockchain-based settlement work.
BLOOM Is Expanding Singapore’s Tokenized Finance Strategy
Singapore launched BLOOM in 2025 as part of its wider effort to develop practical applications for tokenized money.
The initiative focuses on areas including domestic and international payments, multi-currency settlement, corporate treasury operations, trade finance, and automated payments.
Participants associated with BLOOM have included major financial and technology companies such as Circle, DBS, OCBC, Partior, Stripe, and UOB.
The program builds on Project Orchid, an earlier Monetary Authority of Singapore initiative exploring programmable money and potential digital forms of the Singapore dollar.
More than 10 trials were conducted through Project Orchid before parts of that work moved toward commercial applications.
BLOOM represents a further step toward testing how blockchain-based money can interact with established financial infrastructure in real-world settings.
Ripple Has Also Tested Stablecoin Payments Under BLOOM
Visa and Nium are not the first companies to explore stablecoin applications through the Singapore initiative.
A BLOOM project announced earlier in 2026 involved Ripple and supply-chain finance company Unloq.
The companies explored the use of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin on the XRP Ledger for trade-finance applications.
The proposed system connected settlement with factors such as shipment verification and financing conditions.
Visa’s project approaches the issue from another direction by concentrating on interoperability between established cross-border payment infrastructure and stablecoin settlement networks.
The involvement of multiple companies demonstrates how Singapore is using BLOOM to explore different institutional stablecoin use cases rather than focusing on one specific blockchain or token.
Nium Brings Cross-Border Payment Experience to the Pilot
Nium already operates a large international payments network and has previously integrated stablecoins into its services.
The company announced a USDC integration with Coinbase earlier in 2026 that allowed businesses to use stablecoins for international payouts.
Nium’s network reaches more than 190 countries.
Through the integration, businesses can fund payouts using USDC while recipients can potentially receive funds either in stablecoins or local currencies, depending on the available service.
Coinbase provides supporting infrastructure including custody, liquidity, and wallets.
One potential advantage of this model is reducing the need for businesses to maintain prefunded balances in numerous countries.
Traditional cross-border payments can require companies to hold capital in different markets before transactions take place. Stablecoin-based settlement could potentially allow funding to occur closer to the moment a payment is actually required.
BLOOM Pilot Focuses on Institutional Settlement
While Nium’s existing stablecoin services focus partly on business payouts, the Visa BLOOM pilot examines another part of the payment chain.
The companies will focus on settlement between Visa and participating financial institutions.
Nium Chief Risk and Compliance Officer Amaresh Mohan said combining established payment networks with programmable digital currencies could create additional settlement options for financial institutions.
The goal is to build interoperability rather than create a completely separate payment ecosystem.
If successful, institutions could potentially use stablecoins for parts of the settlement process while continuing to rely on Visa’s existing network, compliance infrastructure, and security controls.
Visa Has Already Expanded Stablecoin Settlement Across Nine Networks
The Singapore pilot is part of a much broader stablecoin strategy at Visa.
The company has already expanded its on-chain settlement infrastructure to nine blockchain networks.
Its supported networks include Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Stellar, Base, Polygon, Canton, Arc, and Tempo.
Visa reported an annualized stablecoin settlement run rate of approximately $7 billion following an expansion announced earlier in 2026.
At that point, settlement activity had increased about 50% from the previous quarter.
The company has also been expanding support for different stablecoins rather than relying on a single asset.
Supported assets have included the dollar-backed USDC and euro-backed EURC.
Visa Is Pursuing a Multi-Coin, Multi-Chain Strategy
Visa CEO Ryan McInerney has described the company’s stablecoin approach as “multi-coin, multi-chain.”
Rather than attempting to determine which blockchain or stablecoin will ultimately dominate the market, Visa is positioning its infrastructure to work across multiple networks and digital currencies.
This approach could be particularly important for global payments.
Different countries, financial institutions, and applications may prefer different blockchain networks or regulated stablecoins depending on local regulations, liquidity, privacy requirements, and technical capabilities.
Supporting several options gives Visa greater flexibility when integrating blockchain settlement with existing payment systems.
The BLOOM pilot’s inclusion of both dollar- and euro-backed stablecoins reflects that broader strategy.
Visa Is Also Exploring Privacy-Focused Blockchain Settlement
Institutional stablecoin adoption involves challenges beyond transaction speed.
Privacy is particularly important because banks and other regulated institutions may not want sensitive payment and settlement information visible on public blockchains.
Earlier in 2026, Visa participated in a settlement proof of concept involving Brale and the Canton Network.
The project tested Brale’s U.S. dollar-backed SBC stablecoin and examined whether institutions could settle transactions on-chain while limiting public visibility into sensitive financial information.
The goal was to preserve transaction confidentiality while still allowing records to remain available for regulatory, audit, and compliance purposes.
Experiments like this illustrate the range of requirements that blockchain settlement must meet before institutions can adopt it at scale.
Stablecoins Could Help Reduce Settlement Delays
One of the clearest potential advantages of stablecoin settlement is continuous availability.
Visa has said that issuing banks participating in some of its existing on-chain programs can already settle with the network seven days a week.
The company is also working to extend similar functionality to acquirers, the institutions responsible for receiving funds on behalf of merchants following card transactions.
Removing dependence on conventional banking hours could help institutions manage liquidity more efficiently.
Instead of waiting until the next banking day to settle certain obligations, participating institutions could potentially move funds during evenings, weekends, and holidays.
The actual benefits will depend on how quickly stablecoin settlement can be integrated with banking, treasury, accounting, and regulatory systems.
What Comes Next for the Visa-Nium Stablecoin Pilot?
Visa and Nium have not disclosed when the BLOOM pilot will formally begin processing transactions.
They have also not provided expected transaction volumes or identified additional financial institutions that may participate.
Another unanswered question is which dollar- and euro-backed stablecoins will be selected for the test.
The pilot will ultimately help determine whether stablecoins can provide faster and more flexible settlement while meeting the standards expected from global financial infrastructure.
For Visa, the project is another step toward connecting blockchain-based money with its existing payment network rather than treating the two systems as competitors.
For Singapore, the partnership adds another major institutional test to BLOOM as regulators continue exploring how tokenized money can be used in real-world financial markets.
If seven-day settlement proves reliable and commercially useful, stablecoins could increasingly operate behind everyday global payments without requiring consumers to interact directly with cryptocurrency.
