Circle and Nium partner to boost stablecoins, AI

• Key insights: Circle and Nium are partnering to boost stablecoin and agentic payments. 
• What’s at stake: The companies are attempting to improve processing, which is still disjointed even as digital payments technology advances.
• Forward look: Both stablecoins and agentic commerce are in early stages, though payment companies are building systems to accommodate a larger market.

Agentic AI conjures images of digital bots automatically shopping, paying, shipping and managing supply chains without humans being involved. But it’s not that simple. 

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“Agentic commerce will require payment infrastructure that can support increasingly automated and real-time decision making,” Spencer Spinelli, vice president of global payments and enterprise partnerships at Circle, told American Banker. “While AI can streamline how transactions are initiated, businesses still need a reliable way to move funds across borders and deliver them locally.”

Payments fintech Circle and cross-border payments company Nium have connected Circle’s USDC’s settlement system with Nium’s global payout rail. The firms contend this combination will smooth transactions that involve a mix of traditional currency and digital assets. The collaboration comes against a backdrop of payment firms using digital assets as a bridge to process AI-powered transactions that increasingly involve jurisdictions with different currencies.

Agentic commerce and stablecoins are intertwined as stablecoins become the “programmable funding layer” for AI agents. Because stablecoins are digital-native and can be fractionalized, they are emerging as an option for preferred currency for high-volume, machine-to-machine payments. Other payment firms are also attempting to address complexities in cross-border payments by tapping digital assets. Paystand, for example, is releasing its own stablecoin, which is designed to improve speed for international payments, a model digital asset firms such as Ripple and PayPal have used to reduce the need for third parties such as correspondent banks. “We’re seeing strong demand from financial institutions that want faster settlement, improved capital efficiency and less operational complexity in cross-border payments,” Spinelli said.

As dozens of banks, fintechs and retailers consider issuing their own stablecoins, they are chasing a B2B payments market that is projected to grow from $187 trillion in 2025 to $224 trillion by 2030, according to Juniper Research. Juniper also estimates 85% of stablecoin transaction value will be in B2B payments within the next 10 years.

The potential size of the stablecoin and agentic commerce, and the potential to scale quickly, are pushing partnerships between companies that develop products and technology that address different parts of the stablecoin/agentic AI world.  

“It’s worth remembering that they are types of different players with different roles,” Gareth Lodge, principal analyst at Celent, adding Nium is a network, connecting banks and others, effectively providing the final mile. The Circle collaboration gives Nium and and Circle more options, according to Lodge.

“Ultimately, payments is about reach: the more end points, the greater the value,” Lodge said. “So scaling fast is key to becoming the stablecoin of choice. Users want to use one that gives them the most options. It also helps that banks only need to connect via one single integration to Nium, rather than a connection per stablecoin. Each party is bringing what it does best.”

One challenge in cross-border payments is that settlement and payout are often handled through separate systems and payment companies. While moving funds using stablecoins can be efficient, there’s still a “last mile” issue in delivering funds locally across different markets and currencies involving multiple counterparties and operational complexity. When using agentic commerce, these myriad connections can become more difficult. A single connection can be easier for payments that are automatically made by AI agents, according to Spinelli.  

 “This [Nium] integration is relevant to that problem,” Spinelli said. 

The combination connects Circle’s USDC settlement to Nium’s payment rail in more than 190 countries through a single application programming interface. “That can move value globally without coordinating across a patchwork of local providers,” Spinelli said. 

Circle recently launched a set of tools to support agentic commerce, anticipating demand from developers who will want to combine agentic AI with other business functions, eventually creating a need to process payments. Dozens of banks, big technology firms and payment companies are also investing billions of dollars into agentic commerce. While the agentic commerce market is in its early stages, it’s becoming more competitive in banking and payments. 

Circle’s payments network, which will embed the agentic AI tools and Nium partnership, previously processed more than $8.3 billion in annualized volume based on a 30-day processing window ending March 31, which Circle says provides scale for the Nium partnership. 

“We are encouraged by Circle’s focus on keeping USDC on its platform,” analysts at William Blair said in a research note. “USDC’s growing transaction shares is an indicator of its ubiquity in emerging commercial applications.”

For its part, Nium has been deepening its ties to stablecoins. The company recently partnered with Coinbase to support the conversion of stablecoins to traditional currency. This adds to other Nium products, such as processing Visa’s Fast Track program, which enables fintechs to design, build and launch their own card products. Adding stablecoins to the mix potentially makes digital currency an attractive option to move funds.

“Digital assets are still thought of as a stored value asset more than a way to move funds,” Santhosh Srinivasan, vice president of treasury at Nium, told American Banker. “That’s the gap we’re trying to address. It’s designed to reduce friction between the digital asset world and the ‘fiat’ world. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a crypto native.”