Key Takeaways
- U.S. Bank put USBDC to work Sept. 9, sending its own stablecoin across borders on Stellar.
- The 163-year-old financial institution, a top-5 U.S. lender, took the rare route of moving its own digital dollar on a public chain.
- U.S. Bank says the Sept. 9 test is another step toward putting its Digital Asset Platform to real use.
U.S. Bank Takes Its Own Stablecoin Onto a Public Blockchain
The banking industry is very much involved with blockchain and stablecoins these days, and on Wednesday, U.S. Bank said it leveraged a dollar-pegged stablecoin USBDC to complete a “cross-border payment between U.S. Bank entities in North America and Europe.”
The financial institution is no small player in traditional finance (TradFi). The 163-year-old bank has been around since Abraham Lincoln’s administration, and as of June 2026, the bank’s assets under management (AUM) stand at $445.4 billion. Interestingly, the Stellar-based transfer was not done on a close private ledger, as USBDC traveled on an open network while staying wired into the bank’s existing systems.
“This live pilot demonstrates our ability to accelerate global cash management and money movement capabilities,” Gunjan Kedia, the chairman and chief executive officer at U.S. Bank, explained during the announcement. “We are excited to create value for our clients and harness the power of a new technology within the banking system.”
U.S. Bank Says the Stellar Pilot Is Only Another Step
U.S. Bank also noted that the pilot validates the financial institution’s infrastructure, dubbed the “Digital Asset Platform.” This technology or suite “evaluates minting, payment redemption, freezing and clawback capabilities,” U.S. Bank disclosed. Almost no large bank has done the same thing. A lot of financial institutions have done similarly adjacent things.
The closest things to the USBDC move would be projects like Société Générale’s EURCV and USDCV via SG-FORGE, SoFi Bank’s SoFiUSD, or Custodia Bank’s and Vantage Bank’s Avit. JPMorgan runs JPMD on Coinbase’s public Base network, but insists it is a deposit token, not a stablecoin. Prior to U.S. Bank’s news, earlier this week, Citi and DBS sent tokenized USD during the weekend using the Swift blockchain network.
The project isn’t coming out of nowhere either. U.S. Bank and the Stellar Development Foundation have already been working together, so this is really another step in that relationship. “This pilot is another step forward in our broader digital asset strategy,” Jamie Walker, head of Digital Assets and Money Movement at U.S. Bank, stated.
“Our focus remains on delivering solutions that solve real client challenges while maintaining the safety, security, and reliability that clients expect from U.S. Bank,” the bank executive added.
