Circle is preparing to bring its USDC stablecoin to roughly 40 emerging and developing markets, CEO Jeremy Allaire said on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok, signaling a shift from early adoption to mainstream scaling for dollar-backed digital assets.
According to reports by Reuters, Decrypt and PANews, Allaire cited organic demand from individuals and businesses in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East that want access to an internet-based economy. He framed the U.S. GENIUS Act, which takes effect in January, as a watershed that would give the world “legal digital dollars.”
USDC holds about 25% of the stablecoin market, compared with roughly 60% for Tether’s USDT. USDC circulation rose 19% year over year to $73.3 billion in the second quarter. Circle has reinforced its position through a $400 million acquisition of payments firm Tazapay, a $100 million strategic investment from Binance, a federal banking charter secured in July, and an ongoing pursuit of a New York trust charter. Its Arc network has been adopted by BlackRock, Visa and Standard Chartered, and Allaire said AI agents making machine-to-machine micropayments are also boosting USDC usage.
Separately, BIS Working Paper 1382 examined whether banks can slow stablecoin growth by paying depositors more. Using weekly U.S. data from January 2019 to June 2025, when stablecoin market capitalization grew from under $5 billion to more than $220 billion, the authors found that a one-basis-point rise in average non-maturity deposit rates in a single week predicts about three percentage points less ten-week stablecoin growth. Correcting for reverse causation, the effect rises to roughly nine points, or about 6% growth versus an average of 15%.
The research highlights a threshold around a 3% fed funds rate: below that, deposit rates barely move, but above it banks reprice more aggressively as deposit alternatives become salient. The Fed raised rates in September 2026 to a 3.75%–4.00% target range, with average savings rates at 0.37% and top online savings accounts near 4.50%. The paper found USDC is more sensitive to deposit-rate changes than USDT, with roughly 5% less growth for USDC and about 2% less for USDT over ten weeks. DeFi yields did not shield stablecoins, and only a median 12.8% of USDC and 4.1% of USDT balances were lent through protocols.
The BIS authors say banks retain influence over stablecoin adoption because regulators can require issuers to hold reserves as bank deposits and can decide whether issuers or platforms may pay holders. Community banks have opposed stablecoin rewards in the fight that helped sink the CLARITY Act in the Senate on September 15. The result is a stablecoin race that is moving from trading venues toward everyday payments, settlement, AI micropayments and bank deposit competition.
