Circle has partnered with leading banks in Mexico and Brazil to integrate its stablecoin, USDC, into the national real-time payment systems of these two countries.

The stablecoin issuer Circle announced that USDC is now available in Brazil and Mexico through local payment systems – PIX and SPEI.

Brazil’s PIX is very popular in the domestic financial services market and is expected to expand internationally in the foreseeable future. Pix is the preferred payment method in Brazil. The platform’s instant payment solutions surpass credit and debit cards in terms of local consumer interest.

SPEI is a system developed and operated by Banco de México. It allows you to make electronic payments via a bank, the Internet, or mobile banking almost instantly.

With local bank transfers through these two real-time payment systems, customers in Brazil and Mexico can now access USDC directly, using their local currencies, Brazilian Reais (BRL) and Mexican Pesos (MXN), at competitive rates.

Eliminating international wire transfers from the fiat-crypto exchange process can drastically reduce the transaction time (from days to a few minutes) without getting the firm’s capital trapped in the lengthy settlement processes.

Therefore, local businesses in Mexico and Brazil can now access USDC directly from national financial institutions instead of wiring funds to a bank overseas. They can use USDC for corporate purposes and offer it as a payment option to retail customers.

USD-pegged stablecoin can gain significant traction in Latin America, where cross-border transactions are heavily dollar-denominated.

Mexico is one of the largest trading partners of the US. The two countries exchange over $800 billion in goods and services trade annually. Besides, the US-Mexico corridor comprises the world’s largest remittance flows, surging over $63 billion in 2023 and accounting for up to 4% of Mexican GDP.

As for Brazil, 95% of the national annual foreign trade ($640 billion) occurs in dollars. Direct trade between the US and Brazil is estimated at approximately $120 billion per year.

Stablecoins are typically more cost-effective than traditional remittance methods. Additionally, they can facilitate faster and more transparent transaction mechanisms, boosting the efficiency of modern digital payments and creating more versatile and innovative use cases for payments of the future.