Circle Integrates Polygon USDC for Faster, Cheaper Transactions

Polygon USDC, a bridged version of the USDC hosted on Ethereum, will now be available for making remittances and withdrawals on Circle platforms. The latter is a peer-to-peer payments tech company and also the issuer of the stablecoin.

Polygon, on the other hand, is Ethereum’s leading layer-two network. Last month’s statistics show it supports over 19,000 dApps and more than 2.7 million monthly active wallets.

Circle Adds Support for Polygon USDC

With the new development, Circle users can now make Polygon USDC transactions using their Circle Accounts or through Circle APIs.

Previously, company customers had to manually ‘unbridge’ Polygon USDC to Ethereum USDC to cash out. Similarly, they had to ‘re-bridge’ Ethereum USDC to Polygon USDC to save time and costs on transactions made. This is where Polygon USDC came in.

Polygon makes transactions on Ethereum cheaper, faster, and more efficient. Polygon USDC offers the same advantages.

Individuals and entities can now make or accept Polygon USDC payments on Circle accounts, reads the announcement. They can also easily convert fiat to USDC, or vice versa on the platform. The cross-chain swapping feature is available on seven other blockchains, including Algorand, Solana, Stellar, and Avalanche.

Other than easing payments across businesses, DeFi, GameFi, and NFT platforms, the new features also enable trading on leading exchanges like Binance. All these developments promote crypto adoption, especially for incoming users.

Taking on the Payments Industry

Both Circle and Polygon have made several broad moves in the payments industry. Recently, Polygon partnered with fintech giant Stripe to enable crypto payouts on Twitter. A similar collaboration is the one between Polygon and blockchain payments provider Wyre for a fiat-USDC on-ramp feature.

Circle, on the other hand, is utilized in making payments by several entities, including fintech behemoths Checkout.com and FIS. The stablecoin can also be used to purchase stocks on brokerage provider Voyager Digital, according to a February report. More recently, MoneyGram partnered with Stellar blockchain to enable USDC remittances and cash outs straight from users’ Stellar wallets.

After Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin UST went up in smoke, many voiced fears of similar happenings to other stablecoins, including USDC. However, Circle’s chief strategy officer Dan Disparte explained that USDC, unlike UST, is fully backed by a dollar reserve. He also cautioned that some projects were using the word ‘stablecoin’ without any verifiable stability whatsoever.