Points of Focus

• Nium joined Circle Payments Network on May 27, linking USDC settlement to last-mile payouts across 190 countries in 100 currencies.
• The CPN processes $8.3 billion annually; Nium covers 100+ real-time markets and issues more than 38 million card tokens as a principal Visa and Mastercard issuer.
• Institutions can now reach global recipients through a single API without pre-funding local corridors.

Circle and Nium announced a partnership on May 27 to connect USDC (USDC)-powered settlement with last-mile payout infrastructure across more than 190 countries in 100 currencies. Nium, which holds regulatory licenses in more than 40 countries and processes payouts in real time across more than 100 markets, joins the Circle Payments Network (CPN) as a global payout partner.

Circle 🤝 @NiumGlobal

Nium is joining Circle Payments Network (CPN), connecting USDC settlement to Nium’s global payout infrastructure across 190+ countries and 100 currencies.

For CPN participants, this can support:
→ Faster end-to-end payments
→ Reduced prefunding across…

— Circle (@circle) May 27, 2026

Financial institutions on CPN can now send a USDC payment onchain and have it resolve as local currency in a bank account, digital wallet, or physical card, anywhere across Nium’s network, through a single API integration.

“Traditional and onchain payment rails are converging,” said Prajit Nanu, founder and CEO of Nium, “and that convergence demands infrastructure that banks, fintechs, and global enterprises can rely on at scale.”

The problem this solves

Moving money across borders is one of the most operationally intensive functions in global finance. Banks routinely pre-fund accounts in dozens of countries, tying up capital for days to keep payment corridors open.

A bank sending a payment from New York to a recipient in Nairobi typically routes through correspondent banking networks: the originating bank, a correspondent in a hub market, a local bank, and finally the recipient. Each hop adds time, cost, and potential failure points. The recipient needs a bank account that can receive international wire transfers. The entire process assumes the paying institution has pre-deployed capital in or near the destination market.

Nium’s payout infrastructure eliminates most of that chain. Its network reaches 190 countries, supports 100 currencies, and operates in real time in over 100 of those markets. Critically, Nium collects funds locally in 40 markets, which means institutions can deposit USDC into the CPN and have the final delivery handled without managing a single local provider relationship. The recipient receives funds in their local currency directly into whichever payment endpoint they use. No crypto knowledge is required on the recipient side.

How CPN and Nium connect

The Circle Payments Network is not a consumer product. It is a regulated interbank messaging and settlement infrastructure where participating financial institutions communicate securely and settle directly with each other, with Circle Technology Services providing the technology layer. Institutions on CPN use USDC as the settlement asset, which moves onchain between counterparties before being converted to fiat for final delivery.

Before the Nium partnership, a CPN participant sending to a market outside its existing payout relationships had to source a local provider independently or decline the transaction. With Nium now inside the network, that same institution routes through a single CPN connection and accesses Nium’s entire 190-country footprint. The integration adds foreign-exchange optimization and smart routing on top of the payout reach, reducing cross-currency conversion costs and settlement delays.

“Through our partnership with Nium and integration into Circle Payments Network, we are extending USDC from a settlement instrument into a complete payments flow,” said Kash Razzaghi, chief commercial officer of Circle, “helping institutions move money globally with greater speed, transparency, and capital efficiency.”

The CPN has processed $8.3 billion in annualized transaction volume based on trailing 30-day activity as of March 31, 2026. That volume reflects institutional adoption of USDC for interbank settlement, not consumer transactions. The Nium integration adds last-mile delivery capability, converting settlement volume into completed payments reaching end recipients.

The broader stablecoin infrastructure context

The Nium-Circle partnership is one of four stablecoin infrastructure developments from May 2026 that collectively address the same challenge from different angles.

• SoFiUSD solved the last-mile problem within the US retail banking system on May 27, making an Office of the Comptroller of the Currency-chartered stablecoin accessible in a consumer app.
• Georgia’s GELT targeted cross-border access to sovereign currency. 
• The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions compliance rule set the compliance baseline that any US-supervised stablecoin issuer operating in cross-border flows must meet.

The Nium-Circle integration is the infrastructure layer that enables those flows to run. Nium’s network replaces correspondent banking infrastructure in 100 of those markets with a real-time alternative.

The 38 million card tokens Nium issues annually as a principal issuer on Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and UATP mean USDC-settled payments can reach recipients who do not have a bank account at all, only a payment card.

Deloitte’s 2026 FSI Predictions forecast that stablecoin-enabled US retail payments alone will exceed $200 billion annually by 2030. Cross-border flows represent a substantially larger addressable market.