The deal, announced Tuesday (Sept. 8) and expected to close next year, is designed to employ Tazapay’s banking relationships, local payout rails, and institutional customer base to accelerate adoption of Circle’s USDC stablecoin.
“Tazapay brings deep payment infrastructure across APAC and emerging markets, where we see increasing demand for USDC-denominated transactions,” Irfan Ganchi, senior vice president of payments at Circle, said in a news release.
“This acquisition will increase Circle’s capability to originate and terminate payments globally, near-instant and 24/7, which is a meaningful step toward making USDC the default payment rail for cross-border commerce. Combined with Circle’s existing network, Tazapay extends our coverage to move money anywhere stablecoin payments are being adopted globally.”
According to the release, Tazapay brings to the deal more than $25 billion in annualized payment volume, 60-plus banking and FinTech partners, local payout rails covering upwards of 100 markets. Roughly 60% of Tazapay’s transaction volume already includes stablecoins, the news release added. Circle has been a Tazapay since last year, investing in the company’s Series B funding round.
“We built Tazapay to make payments faster, remove friction, and streamline dependency on banking rails that don’t operate at the speed of global commerce,” said Rahul Shinghal, Tazapay’s co-founder and chief executive.
“Circle has the dollar infrastructure in USDC and the regulatory standing to take what we’ve built further than we could alone. That’s what makes this the right move and what we’re focused on delivering together.”
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence, from the report “From Asset to Everyday Money: Making Digital Currencies Spendable,” found cross-border B2B transfers represent the bulk of global stablecoin payment volume, as these transactions address two problems at once.
“The first is speed and cost. Traditional cross-border wire transfers are slow and expensive, often taking days and consuming a meaningful share of the transaction in fees. Stablecoins settle in seconds at a fraction of the cost,” the report said.
“The second driver is currency exposure, and it is just as significant. In markets where local currencies are depreciating, businesses and individuals use U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins to preserve purchasing power, access dollar-denominated liquidity and protect against inflation.”
This pattern is especially pronounced in Latin America countries seeing sharp currency volatility, as well as parts of Asia-Pacific (APAC), where dollar access through traditional banking channels is either limited or costly.
“Holding stablecoins is not speculative in these markets. It is a practical hedge,” according to that report.
