Circle raises $440 million in boost to USDC payments
Circle, a global payments fintech provider, has announced that it has raised $440 million from many major institutional and strategic investors.
The financing included investments from leading private equity, institutional and strategic investors, including Fidelity Management and Research Company, Marshall Wace, Willett Advisors, and others.
“As a company, Circle has remained committed to our mission of raising global economic prosperity through the power of the digital currency, blockchains, and breakthroughs in programmable money. The sustained global demand for our services powering the growth of USDC, as the most trusted and well-regulated dollar digital currency, signals that we are one step closer to achieving our mission. With powerful backers who are committed to our mission and vision, we will redouble our efforts to expand into new markets, continue driving fundamental technology innovation and grow our team,” said Jeremy Allaire, Circle co-founder, and CEO.
Circle has been one of the pioneers of the blockchain world and its principal contribution has been the huge growth of USD Coin, or USDC, which is a stablecoin that is pegged to the US Dollar. Along with USDT, these are the two most used stablecoins around the world and they fuel a huge number of transactions in the payments field.
There is about $22 billion worth of USDC in circulation and this has grown 28,000% over the last 12 months which shows the large-scale usage and the tie-ups that the company has been able to make to fuel the usage.
“Circle has been an experienced player in making fiat work on blockchains for nearly eight years and has built deep capabilities to ease payments in crypto. At FTX we’re excited to partner further with Circle to help expand these capabilities to all crypto users,” said Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX.
It may be noted that FTX is one of the largest exchanges that primarily uses USDC for all its transactions and the exchange itself has been looking to attract a lot of investments to fuel its growth. So, the growth and increased usage of USDC are very important for exchanges like FTX. USDC has seen over $615 billion in transactions over the last year.
Circle has also been growing its leadership management team as it pushes on with quick and stable growth around the world. Circle platform has served over 100 million transactions by more than 1 million customers across the globe and it would look forward to using these investments to further its reach and become a major player in the payments field.
