USDC, a regulated digital dollar, mirrors the versatility of traditional fiat currency while leveraging blockchain efficiency. Its primary applications span providing global dollar access, fueling digital asset markets, revolutionizing payments, and enhancing humanitarian aid delivery.
Global Dollar Access with USDC
The U.S. dollar remains the dominant global currency for both commerce and individual use. It accounts for over 90% of trade invoicing in Latin America, 74% in Asia Pacific, and 79% in the rest of the world outside Europe. Furthermore, the U.S. Federal Reserve reports that over $1 trillion in U.S. bills—more than 60% of all $100 bills—are held outside the United States.
USDC meets this international demand by offering easier access compared to traditional banking channels. Partnerships with established fintechs, neobanks, and distributors have been crucial in delivering USDC directly to users worldwide.
Nubank: Expanding Financial Inclusion in Latin America
Nubank is the largest digital banking platform outside Asia, serving over 105 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. The company is known for its innovative, customer-centric financial products and mission to fight complexity in financial services.
In May 2024, Circle partnered with Nubank to create digital asset products and provide near-instant, low-cost, 24/7 access to USDC. Users can hold USDC as a store of value, transfer it to other wallets, and increasingly use it for everyday financial activities.
"USDC is a cornerstone of our strategy to empower customers with innovative financial solutions. Its stability, global reach, and regulatory compliance make it an ideal partner for building a more inclusive financial future," said Thomaz Fortes, GM of Crypto at Nubank.
Key metrics from Nubank’s integration include:
- 30% of its crypto customers hold USDC, making it the third-largest digital asset in their portfolios.
- Over 50% of new customers purchase USDC as their first digital asset.
- The amount of USDC held by Nubank customers grew tenfold throughout 2024.
Lemon: Integrating Traditional and Digital Finance
Lemon is a leading Latin American digital currency company operating in Argentina, Peru, and Brazil, with partnerships extending its reach to Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay, and Ecuador. Its virtual dual wallet allows seamless exchange between local currency and crypto assets, including USDC, augmented by additional weekly earnings through DeFi protocols.
The company also offers the innovative Visa Lemon Card, which provides global spending with Bitcoin cashback for Argentine users, with plans to expand throughout the region.
"The 61% growth in USDC held on our platform in the last year highlights the rising demand for digital dollars and our ability to offer tailored solutions for Latin Americans to manage funds freely," stated Maximiliano Raimondi, CFO of Lemon.
Lemon’s USDC holdings reached $137 million, with a 21% growth in USDC holders over the past year.
Chipper Cash: Streamlining African Finance
Chipper Cash is a major African fintech with over six million registered users. It enables low-friction, low-cost money transfers across the continent. The company uses USDC for efficient global treasury management, optimizing cross-border settlement costs.
Its product suite includes dollar-denominated savings accounts, virtual Visa cards, fractional share investments in foreign stocks, and remittance services.
"USDC serves as a critical settlement layer across our platforms, enabling seamless 24/7 USD transfers and fostering broad interoperability. This has dramatically improved our operational efficiency and is fundamental to our growth strategy," said Maijid Moujaled, Co-Founder and President of Chipper Cash.
The company holds 49 operational licenses globally, including a recent Broker-Dealer license from the Ghanaian Securities and Exchange Commission.
USDC in Digital Asset Markets
The digital asset market experienced significant growth and mainstream adoption in 2024, fueled by clearer regulations in more jurisdictions. Compliant exchanges have become key on-ramps for new users, offering enhanced safety and consumer protection.
As the most widely-used regulated stablecoin, USDC mitigates risks for exchanges and their customers, acting as a liquid dollar base layer for trading, lending, and storing value. The amount of USDC held on centralized exchanges worldwide increased steadily throughout the year.
Greater institutional support and new USDC-linked products enhanced liquidity for trading pairs against Bitcoin, Ether, and other digital currencies in both spot and leveraged markets.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and USDC
USDC is a cornerstone of DeFi, where institutions prioritize safety and transparency. As digital asset prices rose in 2024, DeFi’s total value locked (TVL) rebounded to over $126 billion. USDC achieved a 69% share of stablecoin trading volume in DeFi during this period.
The demand for regulated stablecoins is growing in line with new regulations, such as Europe’s MiCA framework. Many European exchanges pre-emptively announced the delisting of non-compliant stablecoins ahead of the December 2024 deadline.
In the U.S., the approval of spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs by the SEC provided mainstream investors with a regulated, transparent way to gain exposure to nearly $2.5 trillion in digital assets. While not directly used in these ETFs, USDC benefits from this trend of greater regulatory clarity and integration, serving as a bridge between traditional and digital asset markets.
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Key Exchange Integrations
Coinbase
Coinbase is a trusted platform for engaging with digital assets. USDC comprises a significant share of its trading liquidity and collateral. In 2023, Coinbase launched Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain that enables sub-second USDC transactions for less than a penny. USDC was a key driver of Base’s notable adoption growth, with $562 billion in USDC moved on the network in the past year.
Bullish
Bullish is an institutional-focused digital asset exchange operating in over 50 jurisdictions. It functions as a full-reserve exchange, prioritizing compliance and security. Bullish introduced USDC in 2021 and now lists over 50 USDC trading pairs. It averages $1.3 billion in daily USDC volume, which constitutes 83% of its average daily trading volume.
dYdX
dYdX is a leading DeFi protocol for perpetual trading. In 2023, it relaunched on the Cosmos ecosystem to achieve lower fees and faster speeds. Every trade on dYdX settles near-instantly in USDC. Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) allows users to easily bring native USDC liquidity to Cosmos from other blockchains. Over $289 million in USDC flowed to dYdX via IBC in the past year, facilitating over $10 billion in trading volume on the chain.
Revolutionizing Global Payments with USDC
USDC is transforming global payments, from merchant processing and remittances to B2B transactions. It has the potential to lower costs and increase competition in the $150 trillion cross-border payments market by replacing fragmented, decades-old infrastructure with streamlined, always-on blockchain technology.
Business payments are a key area for disruption. USDC enables the full benefits of digital payments by moving value without intermediaries on open, shared ledgers.
Circle has made significant strides in 2024, enabling businesses in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, the EEA, Singapore, and Hong Kong to pay each other in USDC through bank partnerships. Recipients can convert these funds into local currency within minutes.
These markets represent some of the world's most active trade corridors. For instance, annual U.S.-Mexico trade exceeds $800 billion, and 95% of Brazil’s $640 billion in annual foreign goods trade is conducted in U.S. dollars.
Worldpay: Enabling Merchant USDC Settlement
Worldpay, a global leader in financial technology, powers commerce experiences in 146 countries. In 2022, it became the first global merchant acquirer to offer direct USDC settlement. This allows businesses worldwide to tap into stablecoin payment volume and offer customers new ways to pay.
Worldpay’s adoption of USDC enables businesses to build a tailored treasury strategy. They can receive USDC from customers and settle these funds over weekends, outside traditional banking hours, to optimize working capital.
Mastercard: Integrating Crypto and Traditional Finance
Mastercard’s partnership with Circle, now in its fifth year, simplifies the use of USDC for settling transactions on its network. This functionality is available to both issuers and acquirers, with millions of dollars settled monthly.
Additionally, Mastercard introduced a card product that enables spending of USDC from self-custodial wallets at over 100 million locations where Mastercard is accepted.
Standard Chartered and Zodia Markets
Zodia Markets, an institution-first digital asset brokerage born from Standard Chartered’s innovation arm, is at the center of corporate, cross-border payment use cases for USDC. It has minted a net $4 billion in USDC, with an average trade size of $3.5 million.
Standard Chartered, a key shareholder in Zodia, holds a portion of the cash backing the USDC reserve and facilitates local minting in Singapore, making USDC easier to access in high-demand markets.
MoneyGram and Stripe: Scaling Digital Remittances
MoneyGram uses USDC on the Stellar blockchain to facilitate global dollar movement, with cash-out options in 180 countries. In 2024, it launched a non-custodial digital wallet that uses USDC for easier peer-to-peer remittances.
Stripe, a technology company building financial infrastructure for the internet, began offering USDC as a payout option for platforms in 2022. In 2024, it enabled merchants to accept stablecoin payments with USDC on Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon blockchains.
Advancing Humanitarian Aid with Digital Dollars
In remote and hard-to-reach areas, humanitarian organizations often face the costly, inefficient, and risky practice of physically transporting cash across borders. USDC is transforming this landscape by providing a fast, transparent, and efficient way to transfer value directly to those in need via a mobile device and digital wallet.
This method offers unmatched speed, lower cost, and high degrees of auditability and trust.
Digital Dollars for Impact:
- 1.4 billion people are unbanked or underbanked globally.
- USDC is available in over 180 countries.
- Sending a USDC payment on certain blockchains can cost less than one cent.
Circle fosters innovation in this space through its Unlocking Impact pitch competitions, which bring together sectors to devise new USDC use cases addressing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
UNHCR: Delivering Aid to Displaced People
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) leads international action to protect people forced to flee their homes due to conflict and persecution. Distributing aid to displaced people is acutely challenging, often involving unstable local currencies and the high risk of physical cash being lost or stolen.
In December 2022, UNHCR and Circle launched a program to distribute USDC via the Stellar blockchain to people displaced by the war in Ukraine. Aid is transferred directly into a recipient’s digital wallet and can be accessed almost instantly on a smartphone.
The success in Ukraine has led to scaling this solution in other regions, like Argentina, where it helps safeguard the value of cash assistance against high inflation and currency devaluation.
Goodwall: Empowering the Next Generation
Goodwall is a social community platform founded to connect a new generation of talent from developing economies with opportunities. It helps users cultivate critical skills for future employment and allows companies and governments to engage with Gen Z at scale.
Goodwall uses USDC for payouts due to its efficiency, low cost, and the widespread demand for dollars in developing markets. The platform reached over 90 million people in 170 countries in 2023.
Through a collaboration with Arbitrum, Goodwall is implementing Circle’s Programmable Wallets to bank the unbanked and connect youth to the global digital economy, anticipating USDC payments to over 50,000 beneficiaries in the upcoming year.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is USDC primarily used for?
USDC is primarily used for four key purposes: providing global access to U.S. dollars, serving as a liquid base currency in digital asset markets, enabling faster and cheaper global payments, and streamlining the delivery of humanitarian aid. Its stability and regulatory compliance make it suitable for both individual and institutional use.
How does USDC improve cross-border payments?
USDC improves cross-border payments by leveraging blockchain technology to remove intermediaries. This results in transactions that can settle in minutes, 24/7, at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems. It is particularly transformative for business payments, remittances, and aid distribution.
Why is USDC considered a regulated stablecoin?
USDC is considered a regulated stablecoin because it is issued by a licensed financial services company that complies with U.S. money transmission laws. The full reserve of assets backing USDC is held in cash and short-duration U.S. treasuries, which are subject to regular audits and reporting to ensure transparency and trust.
Can USDC be used without a bank account?
Yes, one of the significant advantages of USDC is that it can be accessed and used without a traditional bank account. All that is needed is a smartphone and an internet connection to use a digital wallet. This makes it a powerful tool for financial inclusion, especially in underbanked regions.
How are humanitarian organizations using USDC?
Organizations like the UNHCR use USDC to distribute aid directly to recipients' digital wallets. This method is faster, more secure, and more transparent than transporting physical cash. It also protects the value of aid from local inflation and currency devaluation, ensuring greater impact for donors.
What is the difference between holding USDC on an exchange and in a personal wallet?
Holding USDC on a centralized exchange is convenient for trading. Holding it in a self-custodial personal wallet gives the user full control over their assets. The choice depends on the user's goals: active trading versus personal storage and spending.