Visa has joined Singapore's BLOOM initiative and selected Nium for a pilot testing seven-day settlement with regulated U.S. dollar and euro-backed stablecoins across cross-border payment flows.
The BLOOM Initiative
The Monetary Authority of Singapore-led program will test how financial institutions can connect traditional payment systems with stablecoin payment rails while retaining existing security and compliance controls. Nium will serve as Visa's first partner under the framework, with the companies examining whether stablecoins can settle payment obligations throughout the week, including weekends and public holidays.
Traditional payment settlement often remains tied to banking days, creating periods when institutions cannot complete parts of the settlement process. Under the pilot, Visa and Nium will study how regulated stablecoins backed by major currencies can reduce such delays and give participating financial institutions faster access to funds.
Targeting Seven-Day Settlement
For financial institutions, the test focuses on the settlement layer behind payments instead of changing how customers initiate transactions. Visa said stablecoins could make payment flows more programmable and allow institutions to manage settlement outside normal banking hours while using its network, security systems and compliance controls.
Adeline Kim, Visa's group country manager for Regional Southeast Asia, said different forms of money will increasingly need to operate across connected payment networks. The future of payments will be shaped by how different forms of money and payment networks work together for different use cases, she said.
BLOOM's Broader Scope
The Monetary Authority of Singapore introduced BLOOM in 2025 as a framework for developing settlement systems based on tokenized bank liabilities and regulated stablecoins. BLOOM was designed around cross-border and domestic payments, multi-currency settlement and institutional applications including corporate treasury, trade finance and automated payments. Participants named at the time included Circle, DBS, OCBC, Partior, Stripe and UOB.
BLOOM also built on Project Orchid, MAS's earlier work on programmable money and a potential digital Singapore dollar. More than 10 Project Orchid trials were used to study practical digital-money applications before parts of that work were carried into commercial projects. One BLOOM test announced in March involved Ripple and supply-chain finance company Unloq using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger for trade-finance settlement.
Nium's Stablecoin Payment Work
For Nium, the Singapore pilot follows its previous work using stablecoins for international business payments. In April, the company announced a USDC payout integration with Coinbase that brought stablecoin-based cross-border payments into Nium's network spanning more than 190 countries. The setup allows businesses to fund payouts using USDC and settle in either stablecoins or local currencies.
Nium said clients could fund payouts on demand instead of maintaining prefunded balances for each market, addressing one of the liquidity requirements associated with conventional international payment systems. The BLOOM pilot tests another part of the process by focusing on settlement between participating financial institutions and Visa.
Visa's Expanding Stablecoin Infrastructure
Visa already runs stablecoin settlement infrastructure across several blockchain networks. An April expansion added Base, Polygon, Canton, Arc and Tempo to its pilot, bringing the total number of supported networks to nine alongside Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche and Stellar. Visa reported an annualized stablecoin settlement run rate of about $7 billion at the time, up 50% from the previous quarter. By June, Visa said issuing banks participating in its onchain programs could already settle with the network seven days a week, and was working to extend that capability to acquirers.
