Fiserv debuts bank-friendly stablecoin as fintechs join digital dollar race
The payments and fintech giant announced on Monday plans to roll out a new blockchain-based digital asset platform anchored by a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin called FIUSD — a product it hopes will bring thousands of banks and millions of merchants into the crypto economy by year’s end.
The new offering is designed to plug directly into Fiserv’s sprawling global network, which already processes 90 billion transactions a year across 10,000 financial institutions and 6 million merchant locations. Shares closed about 4% higher Monday.
By baking stablecoin support into its existing banking and payment rails, Fiserv aims to fast-track adoption of blockchain-based money movement without requiring clients to overhaul infrastructure or pay extra fees.
FIUSD will initially launch using stablecoin infrastructure from Paxos and Circle
— the latter of which is enjoying a stock market surge since its IPO last month.
Circle, the issuer of USD Coin
, rose more than 9% on Monday to $263.45 a share — more than 700% above its IPO price of $31 when it began trading on June 5.
“Fiserv is a global powerhouse in commerce, and Circle is a global fintech firm and stablecoin market leader,” said Heath Tarbert, President at Circle. “Together, we will work to unlock the next frontier of money movement – embedding stablecoins into everyday commerce and making money move as easily, reliably, and instantly as sending an email.”