Decta, a London-based payments company, has begun using USDC stablecoin to settle its own internal company funds across borders, bypassing traditional banking delays and weekend closures. The move signals a quiet but significant shift: regulated financial firms are now treating stablecoins as operational infrastructure rather than speculative assets. Instead of moving company money through banking rails bound by cut-off times and multi-day settlement periods, Decta converts its fiat funds into USDC through OpenPayd's regulated infrastructure, enabling near-instant international transfers.

What exactly is Decta doing with USDC?

Decta is not offering stablecoin payments to its customers or merchants. Rather, the company is using USDC exclusively for its own back-office treasury operations. Decta operates across 32 countries and serves hundreds of companies through payment processing, acquiring, card issuing, and banking services. The company routinely needs to move its own capital between various banking connections to support day-to-day activities and address cross-entity financial commitments across its supervised operations and geographic areas. Traditionally, these transfers run through banking rails that impose cut-off times, weekend closures, and multi-day value dates. With USDC settlement, Decta can move funds across markets near-instantly.

OpenPayd, a London-founded fintech firm established in 2018, serves as the operational bridge. OpenPayd receives Decta's company funds, converts them into USDC via over-the-counter capabilities, and hands back a settlement instrument that moves faster than a wire transfer. This arrangement is strictly a proprietary treasury use case, not a customer-facing payments flow.

Why does OpenPayd's regulatory status matter?

The key enabler here is OpenPayd's authorization under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which the firm secured in June 2026. MiCA authorization allows OpenPayd to provide crypto services, including fiat-to-stablecoin on- and off-ramps, across the European Economic Area under a single license. This regulatory umbrella is crucial because it allows Decta to convert its fiat into USDC without either company needing its own separate crypto license or touching an unregulated exchange.

"This is a proprietary treasury use case rather than a customer-facing payments flow," explained Lux Thiagarajah, chief commercial officer at OpenPayd.

Lux Thiagarajah, Chief Commercial Officer at OpenPayd

OpenPayd's client roster already includes major crypto platforms and institutional players such as Kraken, eToro, OKX, and liquidity provider B2C2, according to Decta's announcement. This suggests that MiCA authorization is becoming the gateway that lets regulated infrastructure firms offer stablecoin conversion to other regulated businesses without each party needing its own crypto license.

How does this fit into Decta's broader stablecoin strategy?

The USDC settlement arrangement is not Decta's only stablecoin initiative. In August 2024, Decta Limited and France-headquartered Next Generation announced they were assessing the feasibility of launching a euro-denominated stablecoin that Decta would have the capability to issue under MiCA, subject to regulatory approval. The current USDC-for-treasury deal is a separate, narrower step: using an existing stablecoin for internal settlement rather than issuing a new one. Any euro-pegged stablecoin issuance would still need to clear MiCA's regulatory approval process, and nothing in Decta's latest announcement updates that earlier plan's status.

Steps to Understanding Stablecoin Treasury Settlement in Regulated Finance

• Identify the Problem: Traditional banking rails impose cut-off times, weekend closures, and multi-day settlement periods that slow cross-border treasury operations for regulated financial firms.
• Understand the Solution: Stablecoins like USDC enable near-instant settlement across borders when accessed through regulated infrastructure providers like OpenPayd, which hold the necessary crypto licenses.
• Recognize the Regulatory Gateway: MiCA authorization in the EU allows regulated fintech firms to offer fiat-to-stablecoin conversion services to other regulated businesses, eliminating the need for each party to obtain its own crypto license.
• Distinguish Use Cases: Treasury settlement (internal company operations) is separate from customer-facing payments; Decta's USDC move affects only its own back-office operations, not the products it offers merchants or cardholders.

Decta CEO Scott Dawson explained the operational advantage: "Through OpenPayd's regulated infrastructure, Decta converts its own fiat into a digital settlement instrument, moves it across markets near-instantly". This avoids the friction that has frustrated cross-border treasury teams for years. For an industry long skeptical of digital assets touching operational finance, USDC settlement offers a concrete workaround for the exact bottlenecks that have plagued international treasury operations.

Scott Dawson

What makes this development noteworthy is not the novelty of stablecoins themselves, but rather the shift in how regulated financial infrastructure is treating them. Decta is not speculating on stablecoin price movements or offering them as a product to end users. Instead, the company is treating USDC as plumbing, a utility for moving value efficiently across borders. This distinction matters because it suggests that stablecoins are beginning to embed themselves into the operational backbone of regulated finance, not as a replacement for traditional banking but as a faster, more efficient alternative for specific use cases like treasury settlement.

The broader implication is that MiCA and similar regulatory frameworks are creating a path for stablecoins to integrate into mainstream financial operations without requiring a wholesale overhaul of existing banking infrastructure. Regulated firms can now access stablecoin settlement through licensed intermediaries, which lowers the barrier to adoption and reduces the regulatory risk for companies like Decta that operate across multiple jurisdictions.