PNC Bank launched a limited pilot allowing eligible corporate and institutional clients to receive USDC payments through Coinbase, with the stablecoins automatically converted into US dollars and deposited into designated PNC accounts, Cointelegraph reported on November 10, 2026.
The arrangement lets participating businesses accept stablecoin payments without holding the tokens themselves.
How the payment flow works
The pilot uses Coinbase Payments products to accept USDC on Ethereum. USDC is a US dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Circle. Coinbase handles the conversion into dollars before the funds reach clients’ designated PNC accounts.
PNC, described in the report as the eighth-largest US bank by assets, said the service aims to speed up access to funds and improve cross-border payment efficiency. Those are the bank’s stated goals: the report did not provide measured results.
PNC did not disclose fees, settlement-time benchmarks or the number of participating clients. It also had not responded to Cointelegraph’s request for additional details by publication time.
A further step in PNC’s Coinbase partnership
The pilot builds on a partnership established in July 2025. Under that agreement, PNC would offer cryptocurrency services through Coinbase’s infrastructure while providing banking services to the exchange. The partnership subsequently led to Bitcoin trading for eligible PNC Private Bank clients in December.
Cointelegraph also cited a comparable initiative at Citi, which expanded its Coinbase partnership in September to let institutional clients accept stablecoin payments through Spring by Citi. In that arrangement, Coinbase converts the payments into fiat currency.
Market context at the time of the report
According to DefiLlama figures cited by Cointelegraph, USDC was the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization at $70.5 billion, behind Tether’s USDT at $176.8 billion. The total stablecoin market stood at around $290.8 billion on Monday. These figures reflect the original report’s time context, not current market values.
Original source: Cointelegraph — “PNC Bank tests turning USDC payments into dollar deposits”. Published November 10, 2026, at 01:48:35 UTC+08:00.