Circle adds Finastra to stablecoin partner roster

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Finastra is the latest financial services provider to bring blockchain technology to cross-border payments for banks.

Finastra, a financial software company, partnered with global fintech and stablecoin issuer Circle this week to incorporate USDC into Finastra's domestic and cross-border payment products. 

The two firms are offering U.S. banks the ability to process payments using Circle's USDC, a form of digital currency that's backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries and cash for a "stable" one-to-one value with the U.S. dollar.

Finastra's bank customers now have the option to settle cross-border payments in USDC through existing cross-border payment systems, including for transactions where payment instructions on both sides remain in traditional or local currency. The tech provider's cross-border payments platform, Global PAYPlus, processes more than $5 trillion in transactions daily, according to the company.

"This collaboration is about giving banks the tools they need to innovate in cross-border payments without having to build a standalone payment processing infrastructure," Finastra CEO Chris Walters said in a statement.

The partnership seeks to provide an alternative to correspondent banks while maintaining compliance and foreign exchange processes, according to a company representative.

Cross-border payments typically rely on multiple intermediaries, but experts say that bringing new technology in could ease the process for banks facilitating these transactions.

"The big issues with cross-border payments are that they are slow and expensive," Kate Drew, director of research at bank consulting firm CCG Catalyst, told American Banker. "This has always been where fintech shines, because technology speeds things up and makes them cheaper. Stablecoins can allow near-instantaneous transfers, lower costs and enhanced transparency through blockchain technology."

Finastra says it serves "45 of the world's top 50 banks" and has more than 8,100 customers. The tech provider also previously ventured into the crypto trading market through a partnership with digital asset marketplace Bakkt in late 2021.

Circle launched its Payments Network product in April of this year, bringing its signature stablecoin to real-time payments on a global scale.

"Together, we're enabling financial institutions to test and launch innovative payment models that combine blockchain technology with the scale and trust of the existing banking system," said Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire.

The recent uptick in stablecoin interest among financial institutions is partly due to the signing of the GENIUS Act into law in July of this year. Under the new regulation, federally insured depository institutions and some nonbank institutions can issue payment stablecoins under oversight from their primary federal regulators.

"On the heels of the GENIUS Act, we are seeing a lot more activity and interest in the space," Drew said. "Stablecoins feel like a natural fit for cross-border payments, and bringing regulatory clarity to the asset class should help drive stablecoins as a tool for cross-border payments (and other use cases) to the mainstream."

A few days after the GENIUS Act was signed, competing bank core technology provider FIS partnered with Circle to offer FIS' bank clients the ability to conduct domestic and foreign transactions using Circle's stablecoin. Earlier this month, SoFi Technologies announced that it will be using Bitcoin blockchain technology through a partnership with Lightspark to bring cross-border remittance payments to its customers.