Source publication time: November 10, 2026, at 01:48:35 UTC+8. This article reflects the reporting at that time.
PNC Bank, the eighth-largest US bank by assets, launched a limited pilot allowing eligible corporate and institutional clients to receive USDC payments through Coinbase. The arrangement lets businesses accept stablecoin payments without holding the tokens themselves.
How the pilot works
The service accepts Circle-issued, US dollar-backed USDC on Ethereum using Coinbase Payments products. Incoming payments are automatically converted into dollars and deposited into designated PNC accounts.
PNC said the service aims to give businesses faster access to funds and improve cross-border payment efficiency. Those are stated objectives, not demonstrated performance results: the bank disclosed neither fees nor settlement-time benchmarks. It also did not disclose the number of participating clients or respond to Cointelegraph’s request for additional details by publication time.
A further step in bank adoption
The pilot builds on a partnership established in July 2025. Under that agreement, PNC would offer cryptocurrency services through Coinbase’s infrastructure while providing banking services to the exchange. The partnership subsequently led to Bitcoin trading for eligible PNC Private Bank clients in December.
A comparable initiative came from Citi, which expanded its Coinbase partnership in September to let institutional clients accept stablecoin payments through Spring by Citi. In that arrangement, Coinbase also converts the payments into fiat currency.
For adoption context, both arrangements connect stablecoin payment acceptance with conventional currency receipts. PNC’s pilot remains limited, and the undisclosed participation and performance figures leave its scale and efficiency unquantified.
Stablecoin market snapshot
According to DefiLlama figures cited in the original report, USDC was the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization at $70.5 billion, behind Tether’s USDT at $176.8 billion. The total stablecoin market stood at approximately $290.8 billion on Monday.
Those figures describe market size at the time of reporting; they do not establish the volume of payments processed through PNC’s pilot.