Circle and ACI Worldwide pilot USDC settlement on Colombia’s Bre-B instant-payments network

Circle wants USDC inside Latin America’s banks, not outside them. The stablecoin issuer is partnering with payments-technology firm ACI Worldwide to bring USDC settlement onto the region’s existing banking rails. The first stop is a pilot in Colombia. The collaboration was announced on Tuesday, October 27, 2026. The pitch is cooperation, not disruption: stablecoin settlement running next to traditional payment systems instead of trying to replace 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 built to handle traditional and digital payments on one platform. Adding USDC to that mix 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. That is the country’s interoperable instant-payment system, run by Colombia’s central bank, Banco de la República. Interoperable means a customer at one bank can 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 ...