Core Services of Circle Payments Network: A New Foundation for Compliant Stablecoin Payments

Circle Payments Network (CPN) makes it possible to build a new foundation for how money moves across borders. Built on the advantages of stablecoins like USDC and EURC, CPN is a blockchain-native, compliance-first network designed exclusively for financial institutions.

CPN consists of several core services that can enable secure, transparent, and programmable financial interactions on a global scale. These services allow institutions to operate seamlessly across borders, currencies, and blockchains while maintaining compliance and control.

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Powering stablecoin payments through smart orchestration

‍CPN’s unique approach combines both offchain and onchain actions. Payments orchestration takes place through offchain APIs that create transaction requests. As the network operator and governing body, Circle broadcasts these transactions to the blockchain, which validates the payment details and ensures the transaction is executed onchain as agreed upon. 

Optimizing FX through intelligent discovery

‍CPN enables participating financial institutions to query the network for a given stablecoin or fiat pair and “discover” the network participants and the corresponding price and liquidity available for the request. At launch, CPN integrates USDC and EURC with local fiat liquidity order books and private liquidity sources. Over time, the system will transition to fully onchain FX routing, aggregation and settlement through direct access to onchain FX pools, order books, and private liquidity. 

Preserving confidentiality with selective transparency‍

CPN will incorporate confidentiality features on public blockchains to protect transactional data to help network members meet their privacy and operational obligations. These mechanisms allow users to designate certain transactions as confidential, ensuring that sensitive payment information is not permanently visible on a public blockchain, yet is transmitted securely between financial institutions to meet compliance requirements. This capability supports a broad range of applications, allowing businesses to maintain confidentiality for critical activities such as business payments, trade finance, and payroll processed through CPN.

Expanding capabilities through composability

To expand the value of CPN, Circle enables approved third-party protocols to integrate and interoperate with core network infrastructure, expanding the potential range of stablecoin payment capabilities available to network participants. These could include lending and credit protocols, along with liquidity aggregation, institutional yield, escrow and subscription services, and more. Participation is limited to third parties that Circle has rigorously vetted to uphold stringent standards for regulatory compliance, security, and liquidity management. Through this composable architecture, CPN aims to create a powerful third-party ecosystem for global stablecoin payments and financial services more broadly.

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‍Get in touch with us if you would like to become a CPN partner.

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Circle Technology Services, LLC (CTS) is the operator of Circle Payments Network (CPN) and offers products and services to financial institutions that participate in CPN to facilitate their CPN access and integration.  CPN connects participating financial institutions around the world, with CTS serving as the technology service provider to participating financial institutions. While CTS does not hold funds or manage accounts on behalf of customers, we enable the global ecosystem of participating financial institutions to connect directly with each other, communicate securely, and settle directly with each other.  CTS is not a party to transactions between participating financial institutions facilitated by CPN who use CPN to execute transactions at their own risk.  Use of CPN is subject to the CPN Rules and the CPN Participation Agreement between CTS and a participating financial institution.