The news: Circle reported $740 million in total revenues and reserve income for Q3 2025, up 66% growth YoY.
- Net income soared 202% YoY to $214 million.
- USDC in circulation cracked $73.7 billion at quarter’s end, up 108% YoY.
However, investors sent Circle’s stock price down due to concerns about how falling interest rates would hurt operations.
What’s next: Circle wants to build a platform around USDC to encourage adoption by financial institutions, remittances players, and fintechs.
Launching the beta test of its blockchain, Arc, and exploring a native Arc token furthers these ambitions, while also giving Circle a platform it can promote without the same revenue-sharing agreements involved with Coinbase and USDC. It comes amid a flurry of novel blockchain developments: Google Cloud is developing its own blockchain, Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL), and Stripe launched the Tempo blockchain this August.
Remittance play: On the earnings call, CEO Jeremy Allaire identified cross-border payments as an untapped space for Circle, citing that more payments companies ”want to take advantage of the speed and capital efficiency and cost efficiency of stablecoin infrastructure.” With this push, Circle joins Zelle, SoFi, and Western Union’s recent stablecoin-powered pushes into a crowding crypto-backed remittance space.
More crypto firms are piling into cross-border payments given their perception as the most viable consumer use case for digital currency. With the GENIUS Act’s regulatory clarity, the success of crypto-backed remittances also offers a preview of what broad stablecoin-backed transactions could look like in more mainstream commerce.
Our take: To break into consumer-facing payments, stablecoin issuers need to make it easy for partners to integrate their coins into their cross-border payment systems.
Offering remittance senders lower fees is already part of crypto’s appeal. Stablecoin issuers can take that a step further by offering recipients yield-bearing accounts to store their funds to compete with incumbent rivals that have more established reputations and brand recognition.