USDC is Live on the Stellar Network

SAN FRANCISCO, CA and BOSTON,MA — February 2, 2021 — Circle and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced today that USDC is live on the Stellar network. At launch, Stellar USDC is immediately available on Stellar's decentralized exchange, accessible to any Stellar account through integrated wallets (Lobstr, Solar, StellarPort, StellarX, and StellarTerm), and tradeable across Stellar's ecosystem of more than 9,000 assets including stablecoins like NGNT, BRLT, ARST, EURT, TZS and ZAR.

Stellar USDC pairs the world’s leading digital dollar stablecoin, which has seen over 1,000% year-over-year growth and now has nearly $6B USDC in circulation, with the Stellar network, an established and proven blockchain, which has processed more than 1.5 billion total operations and last year saw a 104% YoY growth in total payments on the network. The integration brings immediate value to the Stellar ecosystem, connecting and creating new business opportunities for existing Stellar-based businesses, USDC’s network of existing partners, and future FinTechs looking to optimize payments, especially cross-border transactions. Businesses, developers, and retail users can learn about how to immediately get started leveraging Stellar USDC at stellar.org/products-and-tools/circle-usdc-eurc.

Businesses and developers can directly access Stellar USDC via one single integration — the Circle Account and its API Services. The Circle Account is a free service powered by a set of APIs that thousands of global businesses use to accept payments at scale, issue programmable payouts, build marketplaces, and soon, receive yield on top of their balance. The Account is free, and via the Circle Multichain Authorized Distributors Program, customers can use Circle APIs to swap among blockchains at no cost. With the Circle Account, businesses around the world can connect bank accounts and mint, redeem, store, send, and receive Stellar USDC.

Stellar ecosystem companies Stably, FinClusive and JST are providing Stellar-native integrations to support liquidity and on/off ramp services for Stellar USDC. Additionally, Wyre and six other Stellar-native platforms are already in the process of integrating USDC into their products and payment operations.

Stellar was announced as an official chain of USDC in October 2020 by SDF and the Centre Consortium, co-founded by Circle and Coinbase. ‍

Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation said: “This integration is going to be a powerhouse for growth in the Stellar ecosystem and a catalyst towards achieving our mission of creating equitable access to the global financial system. It presents significant business opportunities for both new and existing companies to build on the respective strengths of USDC and Stellar. Businesses and developers will benefit from Circle’s scale and liquidity to deliver on the kinds of products and use cases the Stellar was designed for, especially cross-border payments and tokenization.”‍

Jeremy Allaire, Chairman and CEO of Circle, said: "Stellar is helping transform international payments with leading edge technology and a fast-growing ecosystem of businesses and developers creating a new generation of financial applications. Having a trusted and transparent dollar stablecoin, like USDC, in market and available across Circle's suite of API services for payments and treasury operations will help accelerate the pace and scale of these innovations."‍

David Puth, CEO of Centre Consortium, said: “We are very pleased to add Stellar to the Centre network. The partnership of Stellar and Centre will further enhance the growth of USDC while simultaneously strengthening the Stellar ecosystem.”

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About Stellar‍

Stellar is a decentralized, fast, scalable, and uniquely sustainable network for financial products and services. It is both a cross-currency transaction system and a platform for digital asset issuance, designed to connect the world’s financial infrastructure. Dozens of financial institutions worldwide issue assets and settle payments on the Stellar network, which has grown to over 4.8 million accounts. ‍

About the Stellar Development Foundation‍

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) is a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world’s financial infrastructure. Founded in 2014, the Foundation helps maintain Stellar’s codebase, supports the technical and business communities building on the network, and serves as a voice to regulators and institutions. The Foundation seeks to create equitable access to the global financial system, using the Stellar network to unlock the world’s economic potential through blockchain technology.‍

About Circle‍

Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle's platform has supported over 100 million transactions worth tens of billions of dollars, with nearly 10 million retail customers, over a thousand businesses, while storing and securing more than $5 billion in digital currency assets. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin (USDC), which together with Coinbase and the Centre Consortium oversees the standards and protocol for what has become the fastest growing, regulated, fully-reserved stablecoin. USDC now stands at more than $5.9 billion market cap, growing by more than 1000% year-over-year, with over $300 billion processed in on-chain transactions. Today, Circle's transactional services, business accounts, and platform APIs are giving rise to a new generation of financial services and commerce applications that hold the promise of raising global economic prosperity for all through programmable internet commerce. Learn more at https://circle.com.