Circle and Volante partner to add USDC workflows to bank payment platforms

The Circle Volante stablecoin partnership will place USDC payment and settlement workflows within Volante Technologies’ payments platform for financial institutions to assess alongside their established systems. The companies announced the collaboration on September 28, saying it is intended to let banks explore the workflows without setting up a separate digital-asset technology stack.

Volante said it is incorporating the workflows into its AI-powered Payments Platform, where institutions can evaluate their use with existing payment rails, operational controls and requirements for moving into and out of the system. Circle issues USDC through its regulated entities, according to a company press release distributed by Business Wire.

The announcement does not identify a bank customer, commercial terms, transaction volumes, a geography or a date for a production launch. It describes an evaluation and testing capability rather than confirmed bank use in live payments.

What will banks be able to test through the Circle and Volante partnership?

According to Circle and Volante, clients will be able to assess USDC workflows for:

• minting;
• redemption;
• beneficiary wallet registration;
• funding;
• notifications; and
• wallet-to-wallet payment execution.

These functions would sit within the payments infrastructure Volante clients already use, the companies said. Finextra separately reported the collaboration and the same set of proposed workflows.

Deepak Gupta, Volante’s chief product, engineering and delivery officer, said clients “can soon test” the USDC workflows in the platform. That wording indicates the companies are presenting the service as prospective testing, rather than reporting that named institutions have already adopted it.

Nikhil Chandhok, Circle’s chief product and technology officer, said financial institutions need practical means to assess how digital dollars can fit into their operating processes. Gupta said the partners’ approach was to incorporate an additional payment rail into banks’ current infrastructure.

Volante said its client base includes four of the five largest global corporate banks and seven of the 10 largest US banks, though those figures are company claims in the announcement. The companies also said they may pursue further work involving Circle Mint, possible joint go-to-market activity and USDC through Volante. Those items were described as potential future collaboration, not as committed deliverables.

The announcement concerns the ability to evaluate integration with existing payment operations. Neither Circle nor Volante named an institution using the service, or provided evidence of completed payments or settlements through the proposed arrangement.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.