Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Thunes Ltd., a Singapore-based global cross-border payments service, is among the first companies to join the Circle Payments Network Managed Payments platform, enabling stablecoin settlement for Thunes’s clients without requiring them to abandon fiat-based workflows. New York City-based Circle Internet Group Inc. announced the new platform on Wednesday.
For Thunes, the news follows its agreement in 2024 to integrate USDC, Circle’s stablecoin, into its network. Now, the company has agreed to enable its clients to access Circle’s Managed Payments service, which will allow them to perform stablecoin settlement functions while continuing to work with money flows in fiat currencies, Thunes and Circle said.
The agreement with Thunes also comes as Circle works to bring a new cross-border payments network, Arc, onstream. It wasn’t clear early Thursday whether Arc will be involved in the agreement with Thunes, which processes $20 billion to $25 billion annually.
The CPN Managed Payments service is aimed at helping payment service providers fintechs, banks, and global companies speed up payments without the need to manage the underlying digital assets directly, Circle says. What that means, the company adds, is that companies can pay and receive payments in fiat currencies while Circle handles the generation of USDC, blockchain operations, payment orchestration, and compliance.
For financial institutions, Managed Payments is aimed at easing merchant acceptance of stablecoins while settling cross-border transactions using USDC, according to Circle.
Circle says Managed Payments is launching with support from financial institutions and payments providers globally. One such provider named in Circle’s announcement is Veem Inc., an embedded-payments specialist.
