With this expanded, five-year agreement, Binance is investing $100 million in Circle, issuer of the USDC stablecoin, the companies announced Tuesday (Sept. 22).
“Binance has built one of the largest and most dynamic platforms in the world for using digital currency, creating the internet’s largest financial super app, and becoming the most widely used wallet in the world for dollar stablecoins,” Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s co-founder, chair and CEO, said in a news release.
“Together, we see incredible opportunities to leverage USDC to expand dollar access, support savings and investment with innovative digital asset products, and reach people and businesses throughout global emerging markets.”
The agreement will see Binance accelerate the promotion, awareness, and integration of USDC on its platform, particularly in emerging markets, with Circle offering the infrastructure services that support holding and using USDC, the release added.
Richard Teng, co-CEO of Binance, said the partnership is aimed at creating “a more inclusive, transparent, and compliant digital economy.”
“A stable, trusted digital dollar should not be a privilege–it should be available to anyone with a phone. That’s the future this partnership is designed to deliver,” Teng said.
Circle last week launched Arc, a blockchain integrated into its platform and created for financial markets, real-time money movement and agentic economic activity.
“Arc is the single most significant launch in Circle’s history since USDC itself, and it is the embodiment of the premise we have operated on for thirteen years: money should work the way the internet works,” Allaire said at the time. “USDC was step one. Arc is the network built for what comes next.”
PYMNTS later wrote that the launch of Arc was part of a broader trend in the digital asset space, joined by Ripple’s corporate treasury efforts and Mastercard’s plans to embed stablecoin capabilities into the infrastructure already linking banks, merchants and consumers.
“Each market remains early, and none guarantees that stablecoins become the dominant settlement technology,” that report said.
“But the direction of travel is charting an inverse of crypto’s original proposition, where blockchain could create a financial system outside traditional finance. Instead, stablecoins are succeeding through the opposite strategy: embedding themselves inside it.”
