US Bancorp plans to launch its own stablecoin USBDC

US Bancorp, the parent company of US Bank, just crossed a line that most traditional banks have only talked about. The fifth-largest commercial bank in the US successfully ran a live pilot of its proprietary stablecoin, USBDC, executing a cross-border payment between its North American and European operations on the Stellar blockchain. The pilot tested the full lifecycle of a stablecoin transaction: minting, redemption, and payment execution. It also validated integration with the bank’s existing digital infrastructure. What US Bank actually built USBDC is positioned as one of the first bank-issued stablecoins deployed on a public blockchain. That distinction matters. Plenty of banks have experimented with permissioned ledgers, essentially private networks where they control every node. Putting a stablecoin on Stellar, a public network anyone can inspect, represents a meaningfully different bet. The token runs on US Bank’s Digital Asset Platform, a system designed to manage tokenized assets while still interfacing with conventional banking rails. Crucially, USBDC includes built-in mechanisms for freezing tokens and executing clawbacks. These aren’t features the crypto-native crowd ...