Stablecoin payment settlement is not a niche crypto conversation anymore: here’s what Visa is testing with Nium in Singapore.
On August 25, 2026, Visa announced it had joined BLOOM, a programme led by Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Under the programme, Visa and payments infrastructure company Nium will pilot a new form of stablecoin settlement — the process by which financial institutions finalise payment obligations with each other.
The goal is to make that process work seven days a week, including weekends and public holidays, something traditional payment networks do not currently support. The project signals that stablecoins are now being discussed as a potential settlement layer underneath mainstream payment networks.
What each of these companies does for BLOOM initiative
Visa is recognized as one of the biggest payment systems globally. It allows banks, merchants, and credit card holders to make billions of transactions every day. On the other hand, Nium is a fintech company that focuses on cross-border payment transactions and helps businesses make international cash transfers. Both companies have experience in the field of payments, but their recent trials are innovative.
The so-called stablecoins are digital currencies that stay stable in its market price by being pegged to some national currency, for example, the US dollar or Euro. In contrast to Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, the price of stablecoins is always constant. Settlement, in this context, is not the moment a shopper taps a card. It is what happens afterwards, behind the scenes, when banks and payment companies transfer the actual funds between each other to complete the transaction.
Stablecoins can appear in payments at several different levels: consumers paying merchants directly, merchants accepting digital tokens, companies using them for cross-border payouts, and institutions using them to settle obligations between each other. This pilot concerns the last category. Ordinary card transactions would continue to work as they always have, with no change visible to shoppers or merchants.
What does Visa/Nium pilot has to do with banking calendar?
Traditional settlement operates on business days. Banks have cut-off times, and transactions submitted on a Friday evening may not be processed until Monday. Public holidays create further delays. Time-zone differences between countries mean financial institutions are rarely open at the same time. This creates gaps in liquidity, those vague periods when money is technically owed but has not yet moved, and requires laborious reconciliation to match records across institutions.
MAS launched BLOOM in October 2025 precisely to explore solutions to these problems. BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. The initiative brings financial institutions together to test whether tokenised forms of money, including well-regulated stablecoins backed by major currencies such as the US dollar and the euro, can make settlement faster, more continuous, and less dependent on the traditional banking calendar.
What Visa and Nium are testing
Under BLOOM, Nium is Visa’s first partner to pilot stablecoin settlement. According to Nium, the pilot is designed to address specific pain points: weekend cut-offs, time-zone delays, and slow reconciliation windows. By moving settlement from legacy batch-processing systems to blockchain-based rails using regulated stablecoins, both companies aim to reduce friction and improve how quickly financial institutions can access funds.
“We’re building foundational infrastructure for seamless interoperability between traditional and stablecoin-based rails. […] By bringing together the security and trust of established payment networks with the efficiency and programmability of digital currencies, we unlock real value for financial institutions and their customers.”
Amaresh Mohan, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Nium
The pilot will support regulated stablecoins denominated in major currencies, including US-dollar and euro-denominated tokens.
At this stage, the experiment is far from being a live product available to all institutions. It does not mean universal instant settlement has arrived. However, if successful, it could contribute to a future where the settlement layer of global payments no longer stops working on Saturday morning.
Why BLOOM matters beyond Singapore
Singapore is a significant test ground because of its regulatory rigour and its position at the centre of Asian financial flows. If institutional stablecoin settlement proves reliable and compliant here, it provides a framework others can build on.
“Through BLOOM and our pilot with Nium in Singapore, we are exploring how stablecoins can complement existing payment infrastructure, enabling greater flexibility in settlement while preserving the security, resilience and compliance standards that underpin global commerce.”
Adeline Kim, Group Country Manager for Regional Southeast Asia and SVP, Global Clients & Acquirers, Asia Pacific, Visa
