The new offering, announced Monday (April 27), includes fiat-to-stablecoin and stablecoin-to-fiat capabilities from Banking Circle’s core platform, and follows the company’s receipt of a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) license earlier this month.
“The award of our CASP license is an important milestone for Banking Circle, as well as for the broader payments ecosystem,” Laust Bertelsen, the company’s CEO, said in a news release. “Stablecoins have fast evolved from a peripheral innovation into core infrastructure for cross-border settlement, treasury management, and financial inclusion.”
The release noted the increasing size of the stablecoin market: $293 billion in market capitalization, with yearly payment-related transaction volumes estimated at $387 billion, and monthly on-chain volumes of more than $9.3 trillion.
Against this backdrop, the company added, Banking Circle’s stablecoin settlement service is aimed at offering a “fully integrated solution” for institutions looking to capitalize on the speed and efficiency of stablecoin rails.
“By combining the 24/7 availability of blockchain-based payments with the compliance, security, and risk management standards of a regulated bank, the solution addresses longstanding inefficiencies in traditional global settlement rails,” the company said.
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Research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that 42% of middle market companies have at least discussed, tested or used stablecoins, businesses would rather work with banks than crypto-native wallets.
“Crypto-native wallets, while efficient, introduce unfamiliar risks: private key management, fragmented reporting, uncertain custody standards and evolving regulatory interpretations,” PYMNTS wrote last month.
“Banks, by contrast, provide a trust layer that CFOs already understand. They offer established custody frameworks, standardized reporting and compliance processes that align with existing audit requirements.”
When accessed via a bank, that report added, stablecoins are “effectively wrapped in the institutional safeguards that finance teams depend on.”
The research found that nearly half of surveyed CFOs felt that integration with major banks would make stablecoins more relevant to their operations, although 67% cited regulatory and compliance uncertainty as a major obstacle to overcome.
Considerably fewer pointed to speed or cost savings as deciding factors, suggesting that adoption will be fueled by trust rather than performance.
“We don’t start with the asset,” Biswarup Chatterjee, global head of partnerships and innovation, Citi Services at Citi, told PYMNTS. “We typically start with our client need, and then we look at the pros and cons of each type of asset or financing instrument.”
