Circle and Visa partner to provide USD stable coin on Blockchain

Circle has partnered with Visa that will enable businesses around the world to take advantage of the combined strength of USD Coin (USDC), a fully-reserved digital dollar stablecoin supported across multiple public blockchains, and Visa's global payments platform and network.

Demand for digital dollar stablecoins has grown dramatically in 2020 fueled by businesses seeking faster, lower-cost, irreversible payments and settlement. USDC is issued only by regulated and licensed financial institutions that maintain full reserves of assets backing each stablecoin. Circle enables businesses to accept payments and send payouts with traditional payment rails as well as new stablecoin infrastructure. Circle joins the Visa Fintech Fast Track program, adding powerful new capabilities and opportunities for Circle's global customer base and Visa's fintech ecosystem.

Extending the flexibility and convenience of the Circle Business Account, customers will soon have the option of adding a Circle Visa corporate card that will enable the capability for Circle business account holders to spend their USDC at more than 60 million merchants worldwide accepting Visa. Circle is the first crypto firm to announce a Visa corporate card.

Over the past year, Visa has become the card network of choice for digital currency wallets with over 25 approved card programs connected to them. These digital currency wallets represent wide-ranging industry segments, business use cases, and geographies. As a member of Visa's Fintech Fast Track program, Circle will provide Circle Account and API customers with a seamless digital dollar stablecoin payout experience to this fast-growing network of Visa partner wallets.

For example, a global ecommerce marketplace will be able to identify USDC compatible wallets in their region that have approved Visa card programs connected to them. The marketplace will be able to provide their sellers with the option to receive payouts in USDC to one of these Visa partner wallets. The new payout feature will significantly accelerate funds flows, with near-instant settlement and availability, while at the same time reducing transaction fees for businesses, marketplaces, creators, sellers and suppliers.

Circle and Visa will work together to educate and enable Visa's global network of hundreds of fintech partners in its Fintech Fast Track Program and select marketplace partners looking to take advantage of the power of digital dollar stablecoins for global-scale payouts. Delivered through a joint sales and marketing program, Visa partners will gain access to Circle's suite of products and APIs for using digital currency and public blockchains in payments, commerce and financial applications.

"The collaboration between Circle and Visa represents an important development in the support and integration of mainstream payments platforms with stablecoins and blockchain infrastructure, and will offer significant opportunities to expand their use in commerce, payments and financial applications," said Jeremy Allaire, Co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Circle.

"Stablecoins like USDC represent a promising payments innovation and provide an emerging platform for fintechs and digital wallets to enable new payment flows. We are excited to partner with industry leaders like Circle to help connect Visa's clients to the growing USDC payments ecosystem," said Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa.

Circle and Visa will be piloting USDC payouts to participating Visa partner wallets in early 2021. If you are a digital wallet, global marketplace or e-commerce platform that would like to participate in this pilot program, please reach out.