By U.S. Bank said on Wednesday it had completed its first live cross-border payment using USBDC, its proprietary dollar-backed stablecoin, moving funds between the bank’s North American and European entities on the Stellar blockchain.
The Minneapolis-based lender, the fifth-largest commercial bank in the United States, completed the live cross-border payment using its dollar-backed USBDC stablecoin on the Stellar blockchain. The transaction is one of the first instances of a major U.S. bank moving its own stablecoin across borders on a public blockchain network.
“This live pilot demonstrates our ability to accelerate global cash management and money movement capabilities,” Gunjan Kedia, chairman and chief executive of U.S. Bank, said in a statement. “We are excited to create value for our clients and harness the power of a new technology within the banking system.”
The pilot moved USBDC between the bank’s North American and European entities on the public Stellar blockchain. The test also examined minting and redeeming USBDC, as well as freezing and clawing back tokens, functions that allow the bank, as issuer, to retain control over the token.
U.S. Bank said the transaction validated its internally built Digital Asset Platform, which connects tokenized assets with its traditional banking infrastructure.
The platform was designed to let the bank issue and move stablecoins while testing a bank-issued dollar stablecoin for payments, redemption, compliance and institutional settlement without stepping outside its existing regulatory controls.
According to industry publication DailyCoin, the use cases outlined by U.S. Bank are focused on institutional financial activity rather than consumer payments, and the completed transaction was conducted between U.S. Bank’s own North American and European entities, making the pilot a test of infrastructure and operational capabilities rather than a public product rollout.
The bank did not disclose the size of the transaction. U.S. Bank disclosed the Stellar issuer address but provided no transaction value or launch date, and its release did not quantify costs, foreign exchange charges, intermediary fees or improvements in settlement speed compared with the bank’s existing payment rails.
U.S. Bank has been developing USBDC in partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the Stellar network. The transaction followed a November announcement to experiment with custom stablecoin issuance with the Stellar Development Foundation.
Denelle Dixon, chief executive of the Stellar Development Foundation, said the token is now being used in a live pilot to move dollars between U.S. Bank entities across borders on Stellar, calling it a sign of institutional adoption.
U.S. Bank described USBDC as one of the first bank-issued stablecoins to operate on a public blockchain, though several outlets covering the announcement noted that the characterization depends on how bank-issued tokens, stablecoins and public deployment are defined.
U.S. Bank has not said when USBDC might be made available beyond its own internal entities. Despite the launch announcement, USBDC is not yet a stablecoin available to external customers, and it has not been tested with external clients or third-party counterparties.
No timeline exists for a commercial or retail version of the stablecoin. Regulatory treatment of bank-issued stablecoins in cross-border contexts remains uncertain, according to the report.
The bank said it is now examining further applications for the token. U.S. Bank said it is exploring several uses for USBDC, including cross-border treasury operations, liquidity management and moving collateral, though it did not say when the stablecoin could become available to clients or give a timeline for a broader commercial rollout.
The pilot comes as large U.S. and European lenders move to establish their own stablecoin infrastructure ahead of expected growth in digital-dollar payments.
Last week, 21 financial institutions including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs and UBS announced plans to form a company to issue stablecoins for payments and digital asset transactions, with the group expecting to introduce a dollar token in the first half of 2027 before expanding to other currencies.
In Europe, a separate group of lenders has taken a similar step. Qivalis, a consortium of 37 financial institutions across Europe, is developing a regulated euro stablecoin, after the group was formed in May.
U.S. regulators have moved in recent years to create clearer rules for dollar-pegged tokens, which are typically backed one-to-one by cash or short-term government securities and are designed to maintain a stable value against a reference currency such as the U.S. dollar.
That regulatory clarity has encouraged large banks, which had largely stayed on the sidelines of the stablecoin market dominated by crypto-native issuers such as Tether and Circle, to build their own tokens for internal and institutional use.
U.S. Bank, a unit of U.S. Bancorp, has more than $680 billion in assets and operates primarily in the United States, with additional corporate and institutional operations in Europe.
