Circle partners with ACI Worldwide to pilot USDC settlement integration into Colombia's instant-payments network.
DeFi & Yields ·
Circle has partnered with payments-technology firm ACI Worldwide to integrate USDC settlement into Latin America's banking infrastructure, beginning with a pilot program in Colombia. The collaboration, announced Tuesday, pairs Circle's USDC with ACI Connetic, a cloud-based payments orchestration platform, to demonstrate how stablecoin settlement can operate alongside traditional payment systems rather than replace them. The pilot focuses on Colombia's Bre-B network, the country's interoperable instant-payments infrastructure built by ACI, to test how a digital dollar like USDC can integrate into real-time, account-to-account settlement.
The effort reflects a broader industry shift away from debating stablecoin technology toward practical adoption. Both companies framed the initiative as showing how regulated stablecoins can fit into existing treasury operations, governance, and settlement workflows that financial institutions already rely on. Circle's chief commercial officer noted that Latin American banks increasingly seek to understand how stablecoins support payments evolution within their current infrastructure.
The move extends Circle's regional expansion across emerging markets and builds on earlier gains, including USDC adoption by Argentina's Mercado Pago. Colombia presents a logical target given high cross-border remittance volumes and established dollar-denominated savings practices. ACI positioned its platform as technology-agnostic, designed to support other digital-asset providers over time, though details on timeline and scope of the pilot remain unspecified.