Worldpay teams up with BVNK to offer USDC stablecoin payouts

Payments processing firm Worldpay will allow customers in the U.S. and Europe to make disbursements with Circle Internet Financial's USDC stablecoin.

Worldpay, which is being acquired by Global Payments, processed nearly $2.5 trillion in payments last year.

Infrastructure provider BVNK will enable the new stablecoin offering, and crypto firm Fireblocks' integration services will help facilitate the connection to Worldpay. The processor is used by businesses that need to disburse funds to individuals around the world such as online marketplaces paying out sellers or a company employing gig workers. Worldpay's payout platform currently supports 135 traditional currencies.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that this new technology, new payment rail, is making things more efficient in certain pockets," said Nabil Manji, head of fintech growth and financial partnerships at Worldpay. "It's exciting because it's clearly solving pain points in today's payment ecosystem. We haven't had something come along like this that's disrupted cross-border payments in this way in recent memory."

Stablecoins are digital assets usually designed to track the value of traditional currencies one-to-one. The momentum around stablecoins in the U.S. has picked up in recent months following the Trump administration's crypto-friendly approach and eye-catching announcements like Stripe's $1.1 billion acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider Bridge.

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"All the large payment service providers, who are Stripe competitors, also need their stablecoin strategy and need to implement that," said Chris Harmse, co-founder and chief business officer of BVNK. "Stablecoins are becoming part of core commercial rails and we're really powering that shift."

Stablecoin payouts won't be Worldpay's first foray into the sector. In 2022, the company began offering merchants in select regions the ability to receive settlements in USDC. While optimistic about the technology's potential, Worldpay's Manji said evolving regulation could still create some changes around where stablecoins are most valuable. Additionally, there are still areas where stablecoin needs to catch up to existing payment systems, he said.

"A lot of domestic payment systems and international payments like SWIFT have found ways to harmonize data fields and requirements in one or more geographies," Manji said. "That's what's a little missing in the stablecoin space right now is all of those other pieces of information that need to flow with the payment, often for compliance and crime prevention reasons. There isn't a standard way to do that across different blockchains, across different stablecoins."