Visa and Nium Launch MAS BLOOM Pilot for Seven-Day Stablecoin Settlement

Visa is partnering with Nium to test seven-day stablecoin settlement under Singapore's BLOOM initiative, as the payments company evaluates faster, more programmable cross-border payment flows, Fintech News Singapore reported. BLOOM, led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), is short for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online and Multicurrency. The industry program brings financial institutions and other participants together to trial quicker cross-border payments. Maybank Singapore recently joined to support the development of shared standards and infrastructure for tokenised cross-border payments. Nium is Visa's first pilot partner under the program. Because most payment settlement occurs on business days, the pilot will explore settlement on weekends and public holidays. The trial will use regulated, major-currency-backed stablecoins, including the U.S. dollar and euro, alongside Visa's payment network and compliance systems. The aim is to reduce settlement delays and provide participating financial institutions faster access to funds outside traditional settlement windows. Visa described the work as part of its broader blockchain-based settlement experimentation, extending its network beyond card rails toward digital-asset infrastructure. Adeline Kim, Visa's Group Country Manager for Regional Southeast Asia, said the pilot will assess how stablecoins can complement existing payment infrastructure by adding settlement flexibility while maintaining the security, resilience and compliance standards that underpin global commerce. Amaresh Mohan, Nium's Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, said it advances interoperability between traditional payment rails and stablecoin-based rails, calling their convergence inevitable and necessary. Visa and Nium did not disclose a timeline. The pilot is among the more visible efforts by a major card network to integrate regulated stablecoins into settlement processes, and among the first to pair a global card network with a licensed payments provider to test stablecoin settlement beyond standard business days—a use case Singapore regulators have been actively encouraging. The move adds to growing regional bank activity in stablecoin infrastructure.