Hyundai Tests $20,000 USDT Treasury Transfer On Avalanche
Hyundai used USDT on Avalanche to move $20,000 between its U.S. and Mexico entities in about seven minutes, but transaction fees, compliance approvals and wider rollout dates remain outside the public record.
Hyundai has moved a stablecoin-based treasury transfer between its U.S. and Mexico entities into live use, completing a $20,000 transaction on Avalanche in about seven minutes.
The same cross-border movement typically takes three to four hours through traditional banking networks, Hyundai Card said.
CoinDesk reported the initiative as the first publicly announced implementation of this type by a major South Korean company.
Live Treasury Transfer Between Hyundai Entities
The first phase moved funds from Hyundai Motor America to Hyundai Motor Mexico.
Dollars were converted into Tether’s USDT stablecoin, transferred on Avalanche and then converted back into dollars for the Mexican unit.
Hyundai Card, the manufacturer’s credit-card unit and project leader, described the process as an internal remittance system that had reached production readiness.
The pilot used live funds between subsidiaries rather than operating only as a technical sandbox.
Justin Kim, head of APAC at Ava Labs, which develops and supports Avalanche, said Hyundai was the first major enterprise to publicly announce this type of implementation on the blockchain.
He described the transfer as a treasury-management use case rather than a pure technical experiment.
Hyundai is the world’s third-largest carmaker by vehicle sales and makes Kia compact cars and Ioniq electric vehicles.
The pilot was an internal treasury operation, not a customer-facing payment service.
Expansion To More Corridors And Currencies
The companies plan to extend the project to additional cross-border payment corridors and currencies.
Ava Labs said the next phase will examine local currencies and how stablecoin-based systems could scale across more enterprise use cases.
The initiative is part of a broader corporate push to use stablecoins for transfers between subsidiaries, cross-border settlement and payments that move outside traditional banking rails.
Lindsey Einhaus, who leads strategy and operations at stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge, said at Consensus Miami in May that large companies are increasingly testing the technology for those purposes.
A second pilot involving Hyundai’s European subsidiaries is scheduled to begin later this month.
In partnership with Circle Internet, the issuer of USDC, and Visa, it will test local-currency transfers and evaluate the cost of foreign-exchange conversions.
