Thursday at the Converge22 event in San Francisco, Circle announced its acquisition of payment orchestration company Elements, which Circle “plans to rapidly expand its payment services,” Circle explained, adding that the new service will make it easier for merchants to integrate their existing points of contact with Circle’s crypto solutions.
Circle will unveil its new permissionless cross-chain transfer protocol at Converge22
This weekCircleand many other crypto industry heavyweights attended the Converge22 event in San Francisco. During the conference, Circle made a number of announcements such as usd coin (USDC) support being added to Robinhood Markets’ offerings.In addition to its partnership with Robinhood, Circle alsoannounced its new “USDC Interoperability for Developers (and) their Users Cross-chain transfer protocols that supportinteroperability for developers (and) their users.”
“The Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol is permissionless and allows USDC to be natively sent between ecosystems, improving liquidity and reducing fragmentation of bridged assets.” Circle’s official Twitter accountsaid on Wednesday. Circle addedthat “developers building wallets, bridges, payment apps, financial services tools (etc.) will be able to offer simple, cross-chain USDC transactions, simplifying the user experience and maximizing capital efficiency.”
USDC issuer acquires payment services company Elements
The next day, Circleannouncedthat it had acquired payment services companyElementsand announced that it had acquired Elements
. Circle detailed the acquisition, which “includes plans to rapidly expand its payment services to unlock the practical value of crypto and lower the barriers to entry for merchants to access next-generation payment and financial services.” Nikhil Chandhok, Circle’s chief product officer, said the company was “very impressed with the Elements team.”
Circle, a crypto asset company and issuer of stablecoins, further stated.
The new payment service will make it easier for merchants to integrate their existing PSP relationships with Circle’s crypto payment service.
This news comes after the USD Coin (USDC)market cap of stablecoindeflated by $6.7 billion over 83 days. In addition, both Binance and Wazirx have recently automated the conversion of customer holdings of USDC into stablecoin assets, BUSD; in June, Circle revealed support for USDC polygons and launched a stablecoin asset backed 1-to-1 with the euro on June 16. The company also revealed that it had partnered with New York Community Bancorp and that the holding company would hold USDC reserves.
“Elements’ mission is to put more money in the hands of merchants.” Nafis Jamal, founder and CEO of Elements, said during the announcement on September 29.” With Circle, we knew that the natural synergy of our business model would create an opportunity to provide a seamless, low-cost payment and settlement experience for merchants as they use a trusted digital currency.”
Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, image via Circle’s Twitter account.