Hyundai Card’s stablecoin remittance trial heads to Europe, testing MiCA-era rails

Hyundai Card is extending a stablecoin-based corporate remittance trial from North America to Hyundai Motor’s European offices, bringing Circle and Visa into a programme that will now have to navigate the European Union’s multi-currency landscape and its evolving Markets in Crypto-Assets regime.

The South Korean credit card issuer confirmed on 9 July that a proof-of-concept transfer between Hyundai Motor America and Hyundai Motor Mexico had settled a $20,000 payment in an average of seven minutes, versus three to four hours via conventional interbank wire. The transaction converted dollars into Tether’s USDT, moved the stablecoin over the Avalanche blockchain, and converted it back into dollars on arrival, according to the company’s announcement.

From dollar corridor to currency-mixing test

The US-Mexico pilot involved a relatively simple dollar-to-dollar conversion at both ends, with Tether supplying the stablecoin, Avalanche providing the settlement layer, and payments infrastructure firm Axiym connecting the pieces. Extending the model to Hyundai Motor’s European offices is a materially different proposition, since it requires handling euros, pounds and potentially other local currencies rather than a single unit of account.

That currency mismatch is precisely what the European phase is designed to probe. Hyundai Card said the expanded trial will test multi-currency remittances and attempt to establish whether stablecoin rails produce meaningful savings on foreign-exchange costs when set against traditional banking channels, which typically layer correspondent bank fees and conversion spreads onto cross-border transfers.

Circle and Visa join as the compliance questions mount

Circle, issuer of the USDC stablecoin, and payments network Visa will join as global collaborators for the European stage, according to the company. Their involvement points to a broader ambition than the initial dollar corridor, potentially incorporating a euro-denominated stablecoin alongside Tether’s dollar token as the pilot moves into markets where MiCA now governs stablecoin issuance and reserve requirements.

Hyundai Card has indicated the next phase will also address regulatory, accounting, tax and internal control considerations, an acknowledgement that a corporate treasury operation moving value through stablecoins across EU jurisdictions must satisfy compliance obligations well beyond simple transaction speed. The company plans to begin testing at Hyundai Motor’s European offices by the end of the month.

A card issuer’s entry into corporate treasury rails

The initiative is notable as one of the first major efforts by a card issuer, rather than a bank or crypto-native payments firm, to build stablecoin remittance infrastructure for a large industrial conglomerate’s overseas subsidiaries. Hyundai Card sits within Hyundai Motor Group, which operates across dozens of countries, giving the pilot a template it could in principle replicate well beyond Europe if the multi-currency phase proves the cost case.

For European regulators already scrutinising how stablecoins intersect with cross-border payments and treasury operations, a large corporate group testing settlement rails that sit outside conventional banking channels adds a fresh data point to debates over MiCA’s scope and enforcement as institutional stablecoin use expands.

Read more: Brussels moves to revise MiCA as US stablecoin law reshapes global rulebook