Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, agreed to buy Singapore-based cross-border payments firm Tazapay for $400 million in stock, its largest acquisition since buying the Poloniex exchange in 2018. The deal, announced Tuesday, hands Circle a network that processes more than $25 billion in annualized payment volume across more than 100 markets, with about 60% of transactions already involving stablecoins. For a company whose pitch is that stablecoin settlement is becoming core financial plumbing, Tazapay is the missing layer: the local banking connections that turn a digital dollar into actual money in a local account.
What Circle is buying
Tazapay connects payment companies and financial institutions to more than 60 banking and fintech partners, letting them collect and pay out money through local rails in over 100 markets. The company said in March that it served more than 1,000 businesses across 30 countries and had doubled revenue for three consecutive years, alongside a Series B extension led by Circle Ventures. The two already work together. Tazapay has been a design partner for the Circle Payments Network since 2025, moving USDC through its licensed infrastructure in Singapore, the United States, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong.
“Stablecoin settlement is becoming core infrastructure in the global economy, and combining USDC with Tazapay’s world-class banking relationships, local payout rails, and institutional customer base will accelerate worldwide USDC adoption,” said Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s co-founder and CEO, in the announcement.
Circle will pay in Class A common stock, with the share count set by the volume-weighted average closing price over the 20 trading days before closing, adjusted for Tazapay’s debt, transaction costs and cash, according to a regulatory filing. The deal is expected to close in 2027, pending approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The last-mile problem
Stablecoins are fast on the blockchain and useless at the edges. A supplier in Jakarta cannot pay wages with USDC directly; the money has to become rupiah in a bank account. The industry calls this the last-mile problem, and it is the reason cross-border stablecoin payments still depend on local banking partnerships built market by market. Tazapay’s customers, in other words, were not waiting for Circle to solve this. “Our customers were not waiting for stablecoin settlement to arrive. They were already using it, at scale, through rails they trusted,” Tazapay co-founder and CEO Rahul Shinghal wrote in a company post.
| Deal snapshot | |
|---|---|
| Buyer | Circle (NYSE: CRCL) |
| Target | Tazapay, Singapore |
| Price | $400 million, all stock |
| Tazapay volume | $25 billion annualized, 100+ markets |
| Stablecoin share | About 60% of transactions |
| Expected close | 2027, pending MAS approval |
Where this fits in the stablecoin race
Circle is assembling a vertically integrated stack faster than any of its rivals: a national trust bank charter approved by the OCC in July, its own Arc blockchain for enterprise settlement, the Circle Payments Network for institutional flows, and now the local payout rails Tazapay brings. The cross-border payments market it is chasing is enormous and expensive. The World Bank puts the cost of sending money across a border at more than 6% on some corridors, with settlement taking longer than a business day. Every basis point Circle strips out of that is revenue. Competitors are not standing still. Visa said this week that its stablecoin settlement volume is running above $20 billion a year, up 15-fold, and the company opened VisaNet settlement data to blockchain lenders so stablecoin card programs can borrow working capital. Stripe, PayPal and the big banks are all building similar corridors. The acquisition also lands at a delicate moment for Circle’s stock, which has slid from its June highs amid concerns that interest rate cuts will shrink the yield the company earns on USDC reserves. Buying revenue-generating infrastructure with stock, rather than spending cash, is one answer to that pressure. Whether shareholders see it that way will show in the price once the deal terms are digested.
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