Circle & ARC: The Payment Infrastructure Stack Emerging in LATAM
Circle & ARC: The Payment Infrastructure Stack Emerging in LATAM
A deep-dive into how Circle and ARC are supporting payment startups, expanding into LATAM markets, and what the USDC growth curve actually looks like from the inside.
The Numbers First
Circle Transparency. Source: https://www.circle.com/transparency
According to Circle's Q3 2025 Earnings Presentation, USDC in circulation hit $73.7 billion — up 108% year-over-year. As of February 13, 2026, Circle's own transparency page shows $73.4 billion in circulation, backed by $73.7 billion in reserves.
USDC circulation growth (end-of-period, $B). Source: Circle Q3 2025 Earnings Presentation, slide 17
Its share of stablecoin circulation went from 23% to 29% over twelve months (per CoinMarketCap data cited in the Q3 deck), and by Q3'25 USDC accounted for 40% of total stablecoin transaction volume — per Visa Onchain Analytics. Cumulatively, USDC has supported over $41 trillion in on-chain transactions since 2018, with CCTP cross-chain transfer volumes reaching $31 billion in Q3'25 alone (up 7.4x year-over-year).
USDC share of stablecoin circulation and market growth. Source: Circle Q3 2025 Earnings Presentation, slide 7
We'll come back to what those cross-chain numbers mean for builders in a moment.
What Circle Actually Offers the Builder Ecosystem
The product suite is layered, and for payment startups specifically, it covers a lot of ground:
- Circle Mint + API infrastructure — USDC/EURC issuance, CCTP for cross-chain transfers, Paymaster and Gateway modules for multi-chain liquidity management
- Circle Payments Network (CPN) — by November 2025, 29 financial institutions were live on the network, with 55 more in verification; single integration, access to all corridors
- Circle Alliance Program — over a hundred projects in the partner directory, with Circle Ventures taking equity positions in select companies building on USDC rails
- Grant and go-to-market support — early-stage funding and product validation before launch, with a clear graduation path into CPN
The Alliance Program is specifically where the LATAM-oriented case studies concentrate. It's a builder-facing program — the companies in it are building infrastructure and payment products, operating directly on USDC rails.
Startup Case Studies: Who's Actually Building in LATAM
Félix is the cleanest example. A Miami-based fintech, they built a WhatsApp chatbot for US-to-Mexico remittances — layering Circle Mint, Stellar, Bitso, and Mexico's SPEI system to cut transfer fees from ~$5 to ~$3 per $100 sent (roughly 40% cheaper) while enabling 24/7 transfers including weekends. The CEO was direct about the mechanics: USDC settles instantly, which reduces prefunding costs. That's the kind of infrastructure edge that actually moves unit economics for a remittance product.
BUFI (Brazil/LATAM) built an invoicing and payment platform for freelancers and agencies, turning international payouts into near-instant settlements. Their founder Tomas put it plainly: without USDC and Circle's infrastructure, the product wouldn't have been viable at the economics they needed at launch.
Alfred (Miami, LATAM focus) started with a Circle grant, validated product before launch, and then graduated into CPN itself. They built a single API that routes USDC into bank accounts in Mexico and Brazil in minutes — and after CPN integration, they effectively became a payment rail that banks can use to offer USDC withdrawals directly to their customers.
Conduit went the venture route: Circle Ventures led their $36M Series A. They use CPN to open new payment corridors, and their claim is that within the network, launching a new corridor takes days rather than the traditional months. They're now expanding into Asia markets on the back of that raise.
EdenFi (Africa, but worth noting) is building a smart wallet for the African diaspora with USDC as the core stable unit — their reasoning being that it's a stable currency users can trust for cross-border flows.
The Alliance directory has over 100 companies across regions and verticals — the cases above are a sample, not a summary.
ARC: Quick Context for Those Who Need It
For readers already familiar — skip ahead. For those who aren't: ARC is Circle's new public L1, launched to testnet in October 2025, with over 100 companies participating. The design is specifically optimized for payment flows:
- 1–2 second deterministic finality — not probabilistic, actually deterministic
- Gas fees denominated in stablecoins (USDC, EURC) — predictable cost structure for B2B payment products
- Native multi-stablecoin support and built-in tokenized asset interoperability
- On-chain FX layer — FX conversion happens at the settlement layer itself
Predictable fee costs in dollar terms matter for treasury management at scale — that much is straightforward for anyone building B2B payment flows on volatile-gas networks.
Who's In the ARC Testnet
The participant list is more informative than the announcement itself. On the payments and fintech side:
- Amazon Web Services, Brex, Corpay — infrastructure and corporate spend
- dLocal (Uruguay) and EBANX (Brazil) — two of LATAM's most significant PSPs
- LianLian, Paysafe, Nuvei — established global processors evaluating ARC for merchant settlement
- SBI, HSBC, Societe Generale — banking participants exploring the network
Nuvei's framing was specific: they're evaluating ARC for its sub-second finality, predictable dollar-denominated fees, and the built-in FX layer for multi-currency merchant payouts. That's an unusually concrete use-case description from a company processing billions annually.
On the stablecoin issuer side, ARC already has local currency stablecoin issuers from Brazil (Avenia, BRL-backed) and Mexico (Juno/Bitso, MXN-backed). For LATAM startups, that means settlement in local currency, through local rails, with global dollar liquidity accessible underneath.
Visa's public comment on ARC: the stable USDC-denominated fees, fast finality, and programmable interoperability create a strong environment for payment networks to connect and scale infrastructure. Mastercard's blockchain lead called it "a meaningful step toward programmable money."
LATAM: Where the Infrastructure Gap Is Most Visible
Circle's LATAM work has been methodical. In 2024, they integrated PIX (Brazil) and SPEI (Mexico) — meaning businesses and users can now convert between local currency and USDC without multi-day correspondent banking delays.
The partnership with Brazilian firm Matera gives banks the ability to hold USDC and reals in the same system — effectively removing the correspondent bank layer for certain payment flows. That's a real cost reduction for mid-sized institutions currently routing everything through US correspondent banks.
Circle's own framing on this: local USDC availability makes it attractive for businesses in LATAM where flows are already dollar-denominated. We think that's accurate — the dollar preference in the region predates stablecoins by decades, and what Circle is doing is giving that preference a programmable, low-cost infrastructure layer.
Why the LATAM Focus Makes Sense
Revenue growth and reserve income contribution (Q3 2025). Source: Circle Q3 2025 Earnings Presentation, slide 18
The stablecoin layer is where actual user activity concentrates in LATAM, and dollar access is the demand driver. Remittances, savings, cross-border freelance payments — USDC is already the instrument people reach for in the region, and has been for a while.
What Circle is doing with CPN, ARC, PIX/SPEI integration, and the Alliance grant program is giving that existing dollar preference a programmable, low-cost infrastructure layer. The Félix and BUFI cases illustrate what that looks like in practice: startups building on top of a stack where settlement, liquidity, and compliance are already handled at the infrastructure level, so the product layer can actually focus on the user.
That's a meaningful shift in what it costs — in time and capital — to launch a payment product in the region. And given how much unmet demand there is in LATAM for dollar-denominated financial services, Circle's infrastructure position here has a lot of room to compound.