Circle has launched the Circle Payments Network (CPN) to modernize the $190 trillion cross-border payments market with blockchain-based, near-instant settlement.
CPN enables financial institutions to securely exchange payment instructions and settle transactions using USDC on public blockchains.
Circle’s initial focus with CPN is on high-value, underserved global trade corridors.
Stablecoin issuer and infrastructure company Circle unveiled this week that the Circle Payments Network (CPN) mainnet is now live. With CPN, Circle is hoping to disrupt the $190 trillion cross-border market and bring stablecoins mainstream for cross-border payments.
“The launch of CPN represents a leap forward for global payments infrastructure toward an architecture where interoperability, compliance, speed, and cost-efficiency are emphasized,” said Circle VP of Product Management Sunil Sharma. “We are just getting started. As more institutions integrate with CPN, we look forward to powering new use cases, and advancing this new standard for global value exchange.”
Cross-border payments currently depend on legacy infrastructure that is fragmented, slow, and manual. With CPN’s compliance-first payments coordination protocol, financial institutions can exchange payment instructions securely while settling transactions on open, public blockchains in near-real-time.
According to the World Bank, cross-border payments can take up to five days to settle and cost an average of 6.3% per transaction. CPN’s near-instant settlement and cost-efficiency could significantly reduce both time and expense, especially for businesses operating across emerging markets.
CPN combines the reliability of traditional payment systems with the benefits of blockchain rails, which adds openness and speed. With CPN, Circle hopes to bring the benefits of blockchain settlement in global commercial payments. Network participants can enroll as originating financial institutions (OFIs) and/or beneficiary financial institutions (BFIs) for:
B2B supplier payments
Cross-border remittances
Treasury and global cash consolidations
Recurring enterprise payments, including subscriptions
Payroll and mass disbursements
CPN hinges on demand for dollar-backed stablecoins from international markets in which access to fiat dollars is expensive and slow. Because of this, Circle is currently focusing CPN on serving organizations transacting in high-value, underserved global trade corridors that rely on fiat dollars. Active partners in the CPN mainnet include Alfred Pay, Tazapay, Redotpay, and Conduit.
“Throughout 2025,” added Sharma, “we will continue to explore and focus on providers who can serve additional markets that could potentially include Nigeria, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Colombia, India, the United Arab Emirates, China, Turkey, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Argentina.”
Circle was founded in 2013 and is best known for launching USDC, a fully reserved, dollar-backed stablecoin that has facilitated over $28 trillion in on-chain settlement volume since launching in 2018.
With the launch of CPN, Circle is positioning itself not just as a stablecoin issuer, but as a global payments infrastructure provider. As adoption grows and more institutions join the network, Circle’s compliance-first, blockchain-native approach could help to bring stablecoins into the traditional financial system.
Photo by Jimmy Chan
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