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 accepts Circle-issued USDC on Ethereum through Coinbase Payments products. Incoming payments are automatically converted into US dollars and deposited into designated PNC accounts, enabling participating businesses to accept stablecoin payments without holding the tokens.
Scope and unanswered questions
PNC said the service aims to give clients faster access to funds and improve cross-border payment efficiency. Those are the bank’s stated objectives: the report did not include settlement-time benchmarks demonstrating the gains.
The bank also did not disclose fees or the number of participating clients. It had not responded to Cointelegraph’s request for additional details by publication time. The offering was described as a limited pilot for eligible clients, rather than a general rollout.
An extension of 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.
A comparable initiative came from Citi, which expanded its Coinbase partnership in September to let institutional clients accept stablecoin payments through its Spring by Citi platform. In that arrangement, Coinbase converts the payments into fiat currency.
At the time of the report, DefiLlama data placed USDC’s market capitalization at $70.5 billion, making it the second-largest stablecoin behind Tether’s USDT at $176.8 billion. The total stablecoin market stood at approximately $290.8 billion on Monday.