Hyundai Card's $20K Stablecoin Test Moves to Europe With Visa

Hyundai Motor America converted $20,000 into stablecoins and sent them to Hyundai Motor Mexico. The money arrived in seven minutes. Conventional bank wires take three to four hours, the company said.

Hyundai Card, the payments arm of Hyundai Motor Group, disclosed the test as a proof-of-concept for corporate cross-border payments. The U.S. unit turned the dollars into a dollar-pegged stablecoin, transmitted it over the Avalanche blockchain, and the Mexican affiliate swapped it back to greenbacks. Tether provided the stablecoin. Axiym handled the payments infrastructure.

A Hyundai Card official called the pilot a step beyond technical testing. “This pilot is significant because it shows that we have moved beyond a simple technical test and completed preparations for potential real-world adoption,” the official said in a statement.

The company said it worked through accounting, tax, legal, and compliance frameworks at both subsidiaries before executing the transfer.

A second phase starts later this month. Hyundai Card will test the same mechanism with European subsidiaries. The European trial adds Circle as a stablecoin issuer and Visa on the payments side. It will also move beyond dollar-to-dollar conversions into local fiat currencies, letting the company measure savings on foreign exchange fees and currency conversion costs.

Hyundai Card said the test was the first time a South Korean credit card company completed a real-world corporate remittance using stablecoins. The company has not disclosed a timeline for commercial rollout or which European subsidiaries are involved.