Circle is partnering with payments-technology firm ACI Worldwide to bring USDC settlement onto Latin America’s existing banking rails, starting with a pilot in Colombia. The collaboration, announced Tuesday, October 27, 2026, is positioned as cooperation rather than disruption: stablecoin settlement running alongside traditional payment systems instead of replacing them.
How the Colombia pilot works
The setup pairs Circle’s USDC infrastructure with ACI Connetic, ACI’s cloud-based payments orchestration platform. ACI Connetic is designed to handle traditional and digital payments on one platform. Adding USDC means a bank could, in theory, route some transactions through a stablecoin without rebuilding its back office from scratch.
The Colombia pilot will draw on Bre-B, the country’s interoperable instant-payment system run by the central bank, Banco de la República. Interoperability allows a customer at one bank to pay a customer at another bank instantly using shared infrastructure rather than a patchwork of private links.
Bre-B has scaled quickly. It recorded over 500 million transactions in its first five months of operation, as of March 2026, and passed more than 100 million registered payment keys during that same stretch.
According to the research summary, the goal is a multi-rail ecosystem. Institutions could test compliance and operational models inside frameworks they already know, while folding digital assets into daily operations.
What the executives are saying
Kash Razzaghi of Circle emphasized connecting the digital economy with traditional financial infrastructure. Craig Ramsey of ACI noted a shift toward practical applications of stablecoins. The partnership is described as a response to growing interest from financial institutions across Latin America.
Circle’s broader Latin America push
Colombia is not Circle’s first move in the region. The company had already secured a USDC foothold in Latin America through Mercado Pago, the fintech arm tied to one of the region’s best-known e-commerce ecosystems. The ACI deal also follows earlier stablecoin payout expansions in the region.
Both companies are publicly traded. Circle trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL, while ACI Worldwide trades as ACIW.
What this means for banks, Circle and stablecoins
The most important word in this announcement may be “alongside.” A pilot that slots USDC into an existing orchestration layer lowers the barrier for banks cautious about technology that asks them to rip out working systems.
The choice of Colombia is telling. A central bank-run system that logged over 500 million transactions in five months shows strong appetite for fast digital payments.
This is a pilot, so the key milestones are whether participating banks move beyond testing and whether regulators in Colombia stay comfortable as stablecoin settlement touches a central bank-run network. The announcement frames Colombia as the starting point for Latin America more broadly.
