Goldman Sachs-backed digital payment company Circle is looking to file a banking licence application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
As a Federally-chartered national commercial bank, the company can lend out its customers’ deposits.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Circle, which is the principal operator of digital stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), said that all customer deposits will be backed by USDC and can be withdrawn at any time.
Launched in 2018, USDC is a service to tokenize US dollars and facilitate their use over the internet and public blockchains.
Circle anticipates that in the coming years USDC will grow into hundreds of billions of dollars in circulation.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said: “We believe that full-reserve banking, built on digital currency technology, can lead to not just a radically more efficient, but also a safer, more resilient financial system.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalData“Establishing national regulatory standards for dollar digital currencies is crucial to enabling the potential of digital currencies in the real economy, including standards for reserve management and composition.”
Last month, Circle signed an agreement with Concord Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company, to become a publicly-traded company that valued the company at $4.5bn.
Founded in 2013, Circle began its journey as a peer-to-peer payment network and subsequently bought a crypto exchange, dubbed Poloniex, launched a payments service (Circle Pay) and an investment app.
