Coinbase App Enables Peer-to-Peer Payments with USDC Stablecoin

The Coinbase app now enables users to send the company’s stablecoin, USDC, to any recipient’s phone number, email, wallet address, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) or paylink.

These peer-to-peer payments can be done instantly, anywhere in the world, with no limits and no fees, the company said in a Friday (Oct. 3) post on X.

In another post, Coinbase said users can send USDC off-chain for free and send USDC on-chain via Base for free on up to 20 sends a month, and for a network fee after that.

“Sending money should be as simple as sending memes,” Coinbase said in its first post. “So we made it easier than ever to move crypto around the world.”

The PYMNTS Intelligence and Ingo Payments collaboration “Peer Pressure: Balancing Convenience With Compliance in P2P Payments” found that peer-to-peer payments have grown increasingly popular in recent years, especially among younger consumers who prefer a digital-first payment experience.

The report found that at least half of millennial and Generation Z consumers said they use peer-to-peer payments for both in-store and online purchases and that 53% of consumers between the ages of 18 and 25 said they use payment apps more frequently than before.

It was reported in September that Coinbase was spending millions to market itself as more than just a cryptocurrency exchange, and believed that the industry would grow as crypto and traditional finance come together.

“The goal is to replicate all of those services that a traditional bank or brokerage would offer … and offer them in a better way,” Shan Aggarwal, vice president of corporate and business development and ventures, told the Financial Times in September.

The company’s first decade “was [about] crypto as an investment, and that’s the core and what people know us as,” Aggarwal said. “The second phase is crypto as a financial system, going beyond just investing and trading into other financial services.”

In some other recent additions to its products and services, Coinbase partnered with Samsung to enable Galaxy users in the United States to access the Coinbase One membership program within the Samsung Wallet app, prepared to launch a credit card powered by the American Express Network, and teamed up with JPMorgan Chase to make it easier for their mutual customers to buy cryptocurrency.