Ripio & Circle partner to accelerate the adoption of USDC stablecoin across LATAM

By Pavithra R

Ripio, formerly known as Bitpagos, is a financial payments company that provides electronic payment solutions for businesses has announced that the firm has partnered with Circle, a global financial technology firm to accelerate the adoption of USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin across Latin America.

Under the partnership, Ripio will leverage Circle’s platform services to support USDC liquidity, and fund flows across its exchange and wallet products. The company also unveiled Ripio Earn, a USDC yield account that provides a 6% annual interest rate return, to Ripio’s more than 500,000 users in Argentina and Brazil.

Global demand for stablecoins has increased over the past 6 months with USDC growing by nearly 500% year-to-date from just over $400M in circulation at the beginning of the year to a market cap of more than $2.8B today. A key driver for this trend being dollarization. As many currencies continue to strain under macro conditions and show increased volatility, businesses and institutions are pursuing strategies to access US dollars. USDC has emerged as an efficient and effective vehicle in the flight to safety.

South America is one the region which experienced significant growth in stablecoin demand with the urge for US Dollars as a store of value escalating amidst high inflation and devaluation rates, plus fierce capital controls in the case of Argentina has ballooned over the last couple of years.

Ripio is working with Circle to serve the increasing demand for USDC across the region by implementing Circle’s transactional services, business accounts, and platform APIs to support the conversion of local currencies into and out of USDC managing liquidity and custody funds, and automating associated treasury operations across Ripio’s exchange and wallet products.

“From crypto traders and investors to freelance workers and small business owners, the rush to stable assets is growing rapidly, and Ripio continues to be at the forefront of this trend with product and services that make the acquisition and usage of ‘crypto dollars’ fast, efficient and low cost. The addition of Ripio Earn for our customers in Argentina and Brazil is an enormous leap forward for those who want to participate in the DeFi economy and generate additional income from our interest-bearing accounts. We are very happy to have a partner like Circle with a powerful and flexible stablecoin platform that keeps pace with our rapidly evolving product suite, and shares our vision for a more fair and inclusive financial system,” said Sebastian Serrano, Ripio co-founder & CEO.

Ripio Earn works exclusively with USDC and is available to customers throughout Argentina and Brazil. The minimum amount and the maximum placement amount to access Ripio Earn being 50 USDC and 5,000 USDC respectively. The initial interest rate for Ripio’s yield-generating product is 6% annually.

“Ripio is a FinTech pioneer that continues to be in the vanguard of not only the crypto industry, but also the broader consumer and B2B finance sectors in Latin America. We are excited to see Ripio take advantage of our platform services to accelerate the adoption of digital dollars and introduce innovative new products like Ripio Earn. From investors to gig-economy workers, the broad availability of digital dollars championed by Ripio promises to increase access to new economic opportunities for many more people than previously possible,” said Circle co-founder & CEO, Jeremy Allaire.

Founded in 2013, Circle is a global FinTech firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments and commerce worldwide. The firm has introduced next-generation payments processing APIs and has combined the benefits of stablecoins and blockchain with traditional forms of payments like cards and banks.