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,”

“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.”

                                                                 Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product Officer at Circle.

Circle is in a unique position to promote digital payments and an always-on financial system as inherent aspects of the internet because it is the issuer of both USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin (EUROC). As of September 28, 2022, there are more than $49 billion of USDC in circulation, and since its launch in 2018, it has enabled more than $5 trillion in on-chain transactions. The development of a payments infrastructure that enables businesses to take USDC and other cryptocurrencies as payment methods at the point of sale is a logical next step in the increasingly widespread use 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,”

“Today’s news is only the beginning of our joint mission to deliver first-class payments offerings and define the next generation of payments.”

                                                                       Nafis Jamal, Founder and CEO at Elements.

At Circle’s first Converge22 conference, co-founders of Elements Jamal and Hao Min joined Chandhok on stage to demonstrate Circle’s Crypto Payments API, which is now in beta, as well as the one-stop checkout SDK for cryptocurrency merchants, which will be accessible in Q4 2022. Beta access to Circle’s Crypto Payments API is available; for more information, please click here.