Circle announces acquisition of Elements to accelerate crypto payments

By Edlyn Cardoza

On stage at Converge22, Circle announced an accelerated crypto payments roadmap enhanced by the recent acquisition of Elements, a merchant and developer-first payments orchestration platform. The announcement 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.

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

“We are very impressed by the Elements team for their work in taking the complexity out of crypto payments,” said Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product Officer at Circle. “Lowering barriers of entry for payments and financial services and establishing dollar payments utility are core to Circle’s mission. Providing well-designed payment products that can facilitate seamless, efficient, frictionless and delightful customer experiences are key to empowering merchants to take advantage of these next-gen payment solutions.”

As the issuer of both USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin (EUROC), Circle is uniquely positioned to promote digital payments and an always-on financial system as native internet features. More than $49 billion USDC is in circulation as of Sept. 28, 2022, and it has powered more than $5 trillion in on-chain transactions since its 2018 inception. Creating a payments platform that allows merchants to accept USDC and other crypto payments at the point of sale is a natural progression of the growing global adoption of digital currencies.

“Elements’ mission is to put more money into the hands of merchants. 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,” said Nafis Jamal, Founder and CEO at Elements. “Today’s news is only the beginning of our joint mission to deliver first-class payments offerings and define the next generation of payments.”