Circle Integrates USDC with Brazil and Mexico Payment Systems

• Circle has announced that its USD-pegged stablecoin, USDC, is now integrated into Brazil’s PIX and Mexico’s SPEI real-time payment systems.
• This integration allows businesses in these countries to access USDC directly from local financial institutions, significantly speeding up transactions and reducing the need for international wire transfers.

In the latest development, the USDC stablecoin issuer Circle recently announced the integration of the USD-pegged stablecoin into real-time payment systems in countries like Brazil and Mexico.

Circle announced on Tuesday, September 17, that the world’s second-largest stablecoin will now be available in both countries’ banking systems. As a result of this integration, businesses will be able to directly access the USDC stablecoin from local financial institutions without the need for international fire transfers, Circle noted.

Additionally, businesses in Brazil and Mexico can also use the USDC stablecoin for other corporate purposes and offer it to retail customers. The stablecoin issuer Circle said:

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.

The integration also makes the USDC stablecoin available to local fiat currencies such as the Mexican peso (MXN) and the Brazilian Real (BRL). Indirectly, it means the integration of the US Dollar into Mexico’s SPEI and Brazil’s PIX.

In 2020, Brazil’s central bank introduced PIX, an instant payment system enabling individuals, businesses, and government entities to conduct real-time transactions around the clock using just a phone number. By August 2024, PIX had amassed over 168 million users across the country.

Similarly, Mexico’s SPEI system allows users to transfer money between banks in real time via mobile apps or online banking. Operating for 20 years, SPEI processed nearly 3.3 million transactions in 2023.

Circle’s Push Into Latin America

USDc stablecoin issuer circle has been making a push into the Latin American continent thereby targeting a bigger participation in cross-border transactions. It believes that cross-border transactions provide a popular use case for stablecoins.

Circle also mentioned that last year in 2023, remittances from the United States to Mexico were to the tune of $63 billion. This accounted for nearly 4% of the Mexican economy and is up 7% since 2022. Also, as we know, Mexico is one of the largest trading partners to the United States, exchanging goods worth more than $800 billion annually.

In Brazil, around 95% of its $640 billion annual foreign trade in goods is conducted in dollars, including roughly $120 billion in direct trade with the US. Citing strong economic leadership, Circle relocated its headquarters to New York earlier this week, per the CNF report.

On the other hand, Circle is also making the push for USDC to several decentralized finance (DeFi) applications by integrating the stablecoin into the Sui blockchain, reported CNF.