The Stellar Development Foundation and the Bermuda Government did just that Announce The island nation will begin transitioning key payment and financial services activities to the Stellar Network – marking the first operational milestone in Bermuda’s stated ambition, announced at the World Economic Forum in January 2026, to become the world’s first fully on-chain national economy.
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The partnership, announced via Stellar’s official press release, is not a pilot study or working group. It’s the beginning of live publishing. Bermudians will be able to receive wages, pay local merchants, settle government fees, and hold, send and receive digital assets through digital wallets on the Stellar Network.
Government agencies expect to experiment with stablecoin-based payments. Financial institutions will be able to integrate tokenization tools. Social service payments are also being explored as a use case, according to the announcement.
Stable, scalable infrastructure.
This is what the Bermuda Government can achieve by partnering with the Self-Defense Forces.
in @SALTConference, @rajachak75 Talk to @Bermuda Premier On how the growth of the Stellar network can support this exciting next step for Bermuda. pic.twitter.com/graFK5B1sP
– Excellent (@StellarOrg) May 12, 2026
Bermuda problem solved
The economic case behind this move is concrete. Local merchants on the island currently pay between 3% and 5% per transaction in card processing fees, with actual costs reaching 10% in some categories, according to the press release.
The absence of mobile money infrastructure and continued reliance on outdated payment methods has seen Bermudians absorb costs that, under the Social Development Fund, represent the value of leaving the island rather than trading within it.
presence. E. David Burt, Premier of Bermuda, addressed this issue directly in the announcement, noting that Stellar’s digital dollars and infrastructure make it possible to deliver the kind of systemic change in a responsible manner and at the scale that Bermuda requires.
Why Steeler?
The choice of Stellar is not accidental. The network is designed specifically for regulated financial services — public and permissionless by design, but configurable through asset controls required by sovereign and institutional deployments, according to the press release.
Transactions are settled in seconds in fractions of a US cent. The network also operates one of the largest on- and off-cash networks for digital assets in the world, a hugely important feature for the island’s economy that relies on accessible liquidity channels.
Bermuda’s regulatory institution also supports this choice. The island created the Digital Asset Business Code in 2018 – one of the oldest comprehensive regulatory frameworks for digital assets in the world – giving the Sustainable Development Fund a jurisdiction with an existing legal infrastructure rather than a blank slate.
Bermuda has put together what most jurisdictions cannot: regulatory clarity, a compatible ecosystem, and a government willing to lead,” Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation, noted in the release.
XLM's price moving sideways following a steep decline in late 2025, as seen on the daily chart. Source: XLMUSD on Tradingview
This announcement is not Stellar’s first sovereign deployment. The Republic of the Marshall Islands completed the world’s first UBI disbursement via USDM1 on the Stellar Network in December 2025, according to the press release – a precedent that the Bermuda program is now building on.
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This development represents a pivotal moment for the emerging sector’s relationship with the sovereign financial infrastructure. A national government committing to moving its payment economy across the chain is no longer a theoretical use case for blockchain technology – it is an operational case, and Stellar has just become the network supporting the world’s first attempt to prove that it works on a national level.
Cover image from ChatGPT and XLMUSD chart on Tradingview
