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, according to Cointelegraph’s report published on November 10, 2026, at 01:48:35 UTC+8.
The pilot expands access to stablecoin payment infrastructure, but the report provides no participant count or payment-volume data to establish the scale of adoption.
How the payment flow works
The service accepts USDC, Circle’s US dollar-backed stablecoin, on Ethereum using Coinbase Payments products. Incoming payments are automatically converted into dollars and deposited into designated PNC accounts. Businesses can therefore accept stablecoin payments without holding the tokens themselves.
PNC said the service aims to speed up access to funds and improve cross-border payment efficiency. Those are stated objectives rather than demonstrated results: the bank did not disclose fees or settlement-time benchmarks. It also did not respond to Cointelegraph’s request for additional details by publication time.
A further step in the Coinbase partnership
The pilot builds on an agreement established in July 2025, under which PNC would offer cryptocurrency services using Coinbase’s infrastructure while providing banking services to the exchange. That partnership subsequently led to Bitcoin trading for eligible PNC Private Bank clients in December.
Cointelegraph also pointed to a comparable initiative at Citi. In September, Citi expanded its Coinbase partnership to let institutional clients accept stablecoin payments through Spring by Citi, with Coinbase converting those payments into fiat currency.
Infrastructure access is not yet evidence of sustained use
The clearest development is a new payment option for a limited set of PNC clients. Without a disclosed number of participants, transaction volumes or repeat-use figures, the pilot does not establish how widely businesses are using it or whether that use will persist.
For market context, the report cited DefiLlama data placing USDC’s market capitalization at $70.5 billion, second to Tether’s USDT at $176.8 billion. The total stablecoin market stood at about $290.8 billion on the Monday referenced in the report. Those figures describe stablecoin market size, not adoption of PNC’s service.
Original source: Cointelegraph, published November 10, 2026, at 01:48:35 UTC+8.
