Circle has integrated its USD-pegged stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) with Brazil and Mexico’s national real-time payment systems.
According to a Sept. 17 announcement, the stablecoin is now available within both countries’ baking systems. The integration allows businesses to directly access USDC from local financial institutions without international wire transfers, said Circle. Companies in the countries can use the stablecoin for corporate purposes and offer it to retail customers.
“Eliminating international wires can drastically reduce the time it takes to access USDC – from days to just minutes, releasing capital trapped in the lengthy settlement processes,” said the company.
The integration makes USDC available in local fiat currencies, such as the Brazilian Real (BRL) and the Mexican Peso (MXN). It also means a digital dollar integrated into Brazil’s PIX and Mexico’s SPEI.
In 2020, Brazil’s central bank launched PIX, its instant payment system. The system allows individuals, businesses, and government entities to conduct real-time transactions 24 hours a day with just a phone number. As of August 2024, the payment system had over 168 million users in the country.
Similarly, Mexico’s SPEI allows users to send money between banks in real-time through mobile apps or online banking platforms. The country’s interbank system has existed for 20 years and processed nearly 3.3 million transactions in 2023.
Market capitalization for stablecoins has reached $170 billion. Source: DefiLlama.
Circle’s move to Latin America targets a bigger participation in cross-border transactions — one of the popular use cases for stablecoins. According to the company, remittances from the United States to Mexico totaled $63 billion in 2023, an increase of 7% since 2022 and accounting for up to 4% of the Mexican economy.
Mexico is also one of the United States’ largest trading partners, exchanging more than $800 billion in goods and services annually. As for Brazil, approximately 95% of its $640 billion annual foreign trade in goods takes place in dollars, including approximately $120 billion in direct trade with the US.
According to data from DefiLlama, USDC currently has a $35 billion market capitalization, trailing behind Tether (USDT), which has a $118 billion market cap at the time of writing.
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