Circle Launches Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, USDC Issuer Acquires Payment Orchestration Firm Elements

On Thursday, at the Converge22 event in San Francisco, Circle announced the acquisition of the payment orchestration company Elements. Circle explained that the acquisition includes plans to “quickly scale payment offerings.” Circle says the new service will make it easier for merchants to integrate their existing points of contact with Circle’s crypto solutions.

This week Circle and a number of other crypto industry heavyweights attended the Converge22 event in San Francisco. During the conference, Circle has made a number of announcements like usd coin (USDC) support being added to Robinhood Markets’ offerings. In addition to partnering with Robinhood, Circle also announced the firm’s new “cross-chain transfer protocol to support USDC interoperability for developers [and] their users.”

“Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol is permissionless and enables USDC to be sent natively across ecosystems, improving liquidity and reducing fragmentation of bridged assets,” Circle’s official Twitter account said on Wednesday. “Developers building wallets, bridges, payments apps, financial services tools [and] more will be able to deliver simple, cross-chain USDC transactions – simplifying the user experience and maximizing capital efficiency,” Circle added.

The following day, Circle announced it has acquired the payment services firm Elements. Circle detailed that the acquisition “includes plans to quickly scale payment offerings to unlock utility value for crypto and lower the barrier of entry for merchants to access next-gen payments and financial services.” Nikhil Chandhok, the chief product officer at Circle said that the company was “very impressed by the Elements team.”

The crypto asset company and stablecoin issuer Circle further stated:

The new payment offerings make it simple for merchants to integrate their existing PSP relationships with Circle’s crypto payment offerings.

The news follows the market capitalization of the stablecoin usd coin (USDC) deflating by $6.7 billion in 83 days. Furthermore, both Binance and Wazirx recently auto-converted their customer’s USDC holdings into the stablecoin asset BUSD. In June, Circle revealed USDC Polygon support and it launched a stablecoin asset backed 1:1 with the euro on June 16. The company also partnered with New York Community Bancorp and revealed the holding company would custody USDC reserves.

“Elements’ mission is to put more money into the hands of merchants,” Nafis Jamal, the founder and CEO at Elements said during the announcement on September 29. “With Circle, we knew the natural synergy in our business models would create an opportunity to deliver a seamless and low cost payments and settlement experience for merchants using a digital currency they can trust.”

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