Signature Bank Becomes Circle’s Banking Partner
- With the partnership, Signature will become one of the leading financial institutions to hold billions of USDC reserve funds.
- By integrating with Signature’s Signet payments platform, Circle is opening the door to future integrations of products and services within the bank.
Signature Bank in New York City, New York, USA, 25 October 2017. Shutterstock
Financial technology company Circle has partnered with New York-based Signature Bank, which will now hold billions of dollars in USDC reserve deposits, Circle said in a press release on 19 April.
According to the announcement, Circle already has more than $13 billion in reserves for its USDC-issued tokens — with the stablecoin growing at a rate of $300 million new tokens in circulation each week — which is driving interest from global financial service firms to partner with the company. The new partnership will make Signature Bank one of the leading financial institutions to hold USDC reserve funds. The co-founder and CEO of Circle, Jeremy Allaire, said in a statement:
“Adding a respected, forward-thinking financial institution to our USDC reserve network is another step forward in adoption and growth for the world’s fastest-growing digital dollar currency. Integration into Signet will afford many of our commercial customers real-time account USDC settlement 24/7/365.”
As part of the partnership, Signature will integrate Circle into its blockchain-based real-time payments platform Signet, which will open the door to future integrations of Circle products and services within the bank. The integration is expected to complete in the “coming months”, with Signature’s president and CEO, Joseph J. DePaolo, saying the move is the result of increased interest in Circle from crypto-based commercial clients of the bank.
The advantage of Signet — and its competitor Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN) — is that it offers real-time payments every day of the week unlike the traditional finance rails, which do not operate on weekends.
Circle’s USDC digital asset has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing stablecoins. Last month payments giant Visa announced that transactions on its network can now be settled using Circle’s stablecoin, becoming the first major payments network to use stablecoins as a settlement currency.
- The digital ID project said Orb Operators received USDC payments as part of the project’s transitional phase after launch, and now that it is nearing its end Worldcoin will be switching to WLD payments.
- Worldcoin warned Orb Operators to check if they can claim rewards in their region as WLD are not available in the United States and “certain other restricted territories”.
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- Coinbase has informed its customers that it will no longer provide support for Signature Bank’s Signet real-time payments network.
- The crypto exchange is now looking for an alternative payments network provider, while waiting for more clarity on the outcome of Signet.
- 40 branches of Signature Bank will be reopened and operated as Flagstar Bank after it acquires $38.5 billion in non-crypto deposits and $12.9 billion in loans.
- The FDIC confirmed that the $4 billion in Signature Bank crypto deposits will be directly returned to customers who had opened a digital asset banking account.