Checkout.com Reveals Merchants Can Accept and Make Payments in USDC

On Tuesday, the financial technology company Checkout.com announced that it will allow merchant settlements using the stablecoin USDC via a partnership with the crypto firm Fireblocks. Checkout.com further detailed that in a beta test with select clients, the company settled $300 million in transaction volume leveraging the USDC stablecoin.

Checkout.com Leverages the Stablecoin USDC

Checkout.com has announced it will be utilizing USDC for merchant settlements. The company, founded in 2009 by Guillaume Pousaz, said it will allow businesses to make payments in, and accept, Circle’s stablecoin usd coin (USDC). Checkout.com’s new stablecoin settlement service is through a partnership with the firm Fireblocks, a crypto custody service provider that just launched an institutional suite of Web3 services.

On the same day as the Checkout.com announcement, Coins.ph partnered with Fireblocks and revealed the fiat and crypto wallet service provider will integrate Fireblocks’ custody management into Coins.ph’s platform. Ran Goldi, Fireblocks’ vice president of payments, explained that Checkout.com’s new USDC payment service will allow much faster settlement times and during non-banking hours.

“Traditionally, merchant payouts are limited to 9-5 on weekdays excluding public holidays and are further delayed through batch processing over several business days,” Goldi said in a statement on Tuesday. “Checkout.com’s weekend settlement means that merchants are no longer restricted by arbitrary settlement times.”

The announcement further notes that select Checkout.com customers already tested the new USDC feature in a beta version of the service. “During the beta, Checkout.com successfully tested, refined and optimized ways for customers’ online fiat transactions to be paid to merchants through USDC,” the company’s announcement details. Jess Houlgrave, the head of crypto strategy at Checkout.com, believes stablecoins offer a variety of benefits.

“Stablecoins started as a fiat-denominated asset used by crypto traders to easily move in and out of more volatile crypto assets, but we believe they will also play a fundamental role in improving the underlying payment landscape,” Houlgrave explained. “The fact that we’re the first full-stack payments provider to successfully pilot an end-to-end solution with weekend merchant-side settlement capability is testament to our commitment to crypto.”