Circle, the issuer of USDC, has struck deals days apart with Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) and Standard Chartered to give institutional clients bank-routed access to mint, redeem and custody the dollar-pegged stablecoin.
Circle Puts BNY, Standard Chartered on USDC Rails
6 July 2026 - 09:08 CEST
On 2 Jul, Standard Chartered became the first global systemically important bank (G-SIB) to offer USDC minting and redemption to institutional clients through a single onboarding process, starting in its Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) operations. That followed BNY's 29 Jun move making USDC the first stablecoin on its Digital Asset Custody platform.
A new front end for digital dollars
The deals point to regulated banks taking on a distribution role for stablecoins, extending their use from crypto trading into treasury and payments. A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency whose value is tied to an asset with a steady value, such as the US dollar.
BNY, the world's largest custodian bank – which safekeeps and settles assets for clients rather than lending against deposits – oversees more than $59tn in assets under custody and administration, plus about $2.1tn in assets under management, as of 31 Mar.
It already serves as the primary custodian of USDC reserves. Under the new setup, BNY clients can hold USDC in digital asset custody wallets at the bank and instruct Circle to mint US dollars into USDC or redeem USDC back into dollars. The bank said it plans to add support for other stablecoin issuers over time.
Standard Chartered's arrangement lets institutional clients access USDC minting and redemption without opening a direct account with Circle.
Circle's second-place fight
USDC has about $73.1bn in market capitalization, second to Tether's USDT at about $184.1bn, according to DefiLlama. The bank tie-ups give Circle a distribution route through regulated channels rather than crypto-native exchanges, at a time when it also faces competition from PayPal's PYUSD and from bank-led tokenized-deposit and onchain settlement projects.
Carolyn Weinberg, chief product and innovation officer at BNY, said in the announcement that institutions "need infrastructure that seamlessly works across traditional and blockchain-based systems."
Bank forecasts for the market
Standard Chartered projects stablecoin supply reaching about $2tn by 2028; Citi forecasts $4tn by 2030. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm that tracks cryptocurrency transactions, estimates that stablecoin transaction volumes could match those of Visa and Mastercard between 2031 and 2039 as usage shifts from trading to payments.
US customer identification rules
In the US, regulators proposed rules on 18 Jun that would require stablecoin issuers to verify customers using standards similar to those applied by banks and credit unions, advancing implementation of the GENIUS Act.
The proposal, from the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators, would require permitted payment stablecoin issuers to maintain Customer Identification Programs, or CIPs, similar to those already required of traditional financial institutions. Comments on the notice of proposed rulemaking are due 21 Aug.
