Hyundai Uses Digital Dollars to Move Money Faster Across Borders

Hyundai became the first big South Korean company to send money between offices using stablecoins, cutting transfer time from hours to minutes.

Carmaker Hyundai just found a faster way to move its own money around the world — and it's using digital technology instead of traditional banks.

Hyundai, the world's third-largest carmaker, has started using stablecoins (a type of cryptocurrency designed to always be worth the same as a real currency, like $1, so its value doesn't jump up and down) to send money between its own offices in different countries. This is called a treasury transfer (moving a company's own cash between its branches).

Here's what happened in the first test:

Hyundai sent $20,000 from its U.S. office to its Mexico office
It used USDT (a popular stablecoin tied to the U.S. dollar)
The transfer took about 7 minutes — compared to the usual 3 to 4 hours through normal banks
It ran on a blockchain called Avalanche (a blockchain is a digital record-keeping system that lets money move directly without a bank in the middle)

Why does this matter? Sending money internationally through banks is often slow and expensive. By using stablecoins, big companies can move money almost instantly and pay lower fees. Hyundai is the first major South Korean company to do this publicly.

The test wasn't just an experiment. As one expert from Ava Labs (the company behind Avalanche) explained, this was a real, live money transfer — not a fake practice run.

What's next? Hyundai plans to expand the project to more countries and currencies. This includes a trial in Europe to test moving local money and to check foreign-exchange costs (the fees you pay when swapping one currency for another). This next stage will involve well-known companies Circle (a stablecoin issuer) and Visa.

The bigger picture: More and more large companies are testing stablecoins to send money between their offices and cut banking costs. Hyundai's move shows this technology is starting to be used for real business, not just crypto trading.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/07/10/hyundai-becomes-first-major-south-korean-company-to-introduce-internal-stablecoin-transfers