PNC Bank has opened a pilot that lets eligible clients of its Corporate and Institutional Banking unit get paid in USDC, a stablecoin backed by U.S. dollars, with Coinbase supplying the technology behind it, the two companies announced on Monday.
When a participating client receives USDC, the tokens are converted 1-to-1 into dollars automatically and deposited into a designated PNC account, according to Coinbase’s post. The USDC travels on the Ethereum blockchain, PNC said. Coinbase’s Payment APIs (application programming interfaces, the software hooks other firms plug into) handle the stablecoin side. PNC contributes the bank account, its treasury management services and its existing corporate client relationships.
Corporate use of stablecoins is still a small slice of the market. “The enterprise adoption of stablecoins is still minuscule,” Nick van Eck, CEO and co-founder of stablecoin company Agora, said on Unchained’s Bits + Bips in October. By his count, business-to-business payments made in stablecoins came to about a quarter of a trillion dollars last year.
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A Limited Pilot
PNC is starting small, offering the service only on a limited basis to eligible clients in a pilot program, the bank’s release says. “Our clients are continually looking at new ways to interact and transact with customers, suppliers and business partners,” Tom Lang, head of Treasury Management Product and Operations at PNC Bank, said in PNC’s release.
Coinbase’s post pitches two benefits for businesses: getting at their money sooner and moving funds across borders more efficiently. The bank’s existing faster payment options stay in place, and USDC becomes one more way for clients to collect.
Alec Lovett, head of Infrastructure Products at Coinbase, said in PNC’s release that the work with PNC “shows how leading banks and trusted digital asset infrastructure come together to let corporate clients take advantage of this technology.”
Second Deal Between the Two
The pilot builds on an earlier arrangement. The two companies first partnered in July 2025, when PNC agreed to provide some banking services to Coinbase and said it would build a product letting its clients buy, hold and sell crypto on Coinbase’s crypto-as-a-service platform.
Coinbase also framed the new pilot as a template for how other banks could add stablecoins to services they already offer, using its infrastructure. Neither company said when the pilot might open to more clients.
Related Listen: Why Banks Failed to Kill Stablecoin Rewards in the Clarity Act
