Visa Partners With Nium to Trial Seven-Day Stablecoin Settlement in Singapore

Visa said Aug. 25 it joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s BLOOM initiative, naming cross-border payments firm Nium as its first partner to settle transactions in stablecoins seven days a week. Visa and Nium announced that same seven-day settlement capability, running on Circle’s USDC, on Nov. 12, 2025, roughly nine months before BLOOM entered the picture. Ripple was the first crypto-native firm to test a use case inside BLOOM, joining in March 2026, five months ahead of Visa. Visa said Tuesday it has joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s BLOOM initiative, naming Nium as its first partner for a pilot that settles transactions in stablecoins seven days a week, including weekends and public holidays. The pilot uses U.S. dollar and euro-denominated stablecoins backed by major currencies, Visa said. Today, Visa announced it’s joined MAS-led BLOOM, with Nium as the first partner. Through this pilot, we’re enabling 24/7 settlement and seamless interoperability for the region’s businesses and their customers. As Nium Chief Compliance & Risk Officer Amaresh Mohan said: “BLOOM… pic.twitter.com/n1uK8W38XR — Nium (@NiumGlobal) August 25, 2026 Visa and Nium announced the same seven-day settlement mechanic, running on Circle’s USDC, on Nov. 12, 2025, without mentioning MAS or any regulatory sandbox. What actually changed this week is that an already-running bilateral pilot moved inside Singapore’s regulated framework, nearly a year after that framework opened. The scope did widen slightly: November’s pilot named only USDC, while Tuesday’s version adds euro-denominated stablecoins. The core mechanic Visa is presenting as new, always-on, seven-day settlement, is the one it already announced 286 days earlier. “Businesses have long been constrained by settlement cycles that move on the cadence of clearing schemes and banks, not on the cadence of global commerce,” Nium chief payments officer Alex Johnson said when the pilot was first announced in November 2025. BLOOM’s Timeline Puts Visa’s Nium Pilot in Context BLOOM launched Oct. 17, 2025, building on Singapore’s earlier Project Orchid work, according to MAS chief fintech officer Kenneth Gay. Its first workstream lineup named Circle, DBS, OCBC, Partior, Stripe and UOB for settlement-asset distribution, Ant International and StraitsX for compliance controls, and Coinbase for agentic payments. No card network was among them. Ripple filled that gap first. It joined BLOOM in March 2026 with trade-finance firm Unloq, piloting programmable settlement in its own RLUSD stablecoin on the XRP Ledger. Visa followed five months later, and only after running the Nium mechanic on its own rails, outside any sandbox, for the better part of a year. Bloom Sandbox Timeline Visa and Nium’s Broader Stablecoin Push Visa’s BLOOM entry is a small piece of a larger stablecoin push.