Circle Pushes Deeper Into Latin America With USDC Settlement in Colombia

In brief

• Circle has tapped ACI Worldwide to integrate USDC settlement into existing banking infrastructure across Latin America, starting with a pilot in Colombia built on ACI’s Bre-B instant-payments system.
• The effort pairs Circle’s USDC with ACI’s Connetic orchestration platform to show banks how stablecoin settlement can run alongside traditional rails.
• It extends Circle’s regional push into dozens of emerging markets and an earlier USDC foothold via Mercado Pago.

Circle is extending its reach across Latin America, teaming up with payments-technology firm ACI Worldwide to fold USDC settlement into the region’s existing banking rails, starting with a pilot in Colombia.

Announced Tuesday, the collaboration pairs Circle’s USDC infrastructure with ACI Connetic, ACI’s cloud-based payments orchestration platform, to show financial institutions how stablecoin settlement can run alongside traditional payment systems rather than replace them.

The initial focus is Colombia, where ACI built the central infrastructure behind Bre-B, the country’s interoperable instant-payments network. The idea is to test how a digital dollar like USDC can slot into that real-time, account-to-account system to create what the companies call a multi-rail ecosystem.