As the global crypto industry continues to evolve, the integration of the sector with traditional technologies is quickly becoming a thing. The latest news highlighting this phenomenon comes from Circle, a fintech company behind the issuance of the well-known stablecoin USDC.

Earlier today, the company’s CEO Jeremy Allaire announced in a post on X that Circle is preparing to enable tap-and-go USDC payments on iPhones.

This development follows Apple’s recent decision to allow third-party developers access to its NFC chip and Secure Element technology. The trillion-dollar company specifically noted the following in its announcement:

Starting with iOS 18.1, developers can offer NFC contactless transactions using the Secure Element from within their own apps on the iPhone, separate from Apple Pay and Apple Wallet.

A new era coming?

Allaire provided more details about the launch of USDC tap-and-go on iPhones, highlighting the implications of this update for payment systems. He noted that point-of-sale systems will soon be able to communicate directly with iPhone wallets to process transactions using blockchain addresses.

This would facilitate “seamless” USDC payments to merchants authenticated via biometrics like FaceID. Allaire added:

When combined with the powerful, low-fee blockchain networks (which are mostly in place today), this creates a powerful path for USDC payments directly to merchants.

Allaire also pointed out that Apple’s latest move goes far beyond the USDC stablecoin.

Lots of chatter and questions about my tweet. A little more clarity so people don’t make this into something it isn’t.

Why is tap-to-pay with USDC coming soon to iPhones and what does this mean for Wallet developers to get started?

– Circle has no relationship with Apple and this… https://t.co/IZfLbIsWGp

— Jeremy Allaire – jda.eth / jdallaire.sol (@jerallaire) August 14, 2024

According to Allaire, developers with access to NFC technology could come up with innovative ways to use iPhones for a variety of applications, from processing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for ticket sales to managing other crypto stablecoins like EURC.

Third-party access to Apple’s NFC chip and Secure Element technology is limited to a few select countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the US, and the UK.

The European Union is excluded, as Apple did not mention it as one of the countries that would have access to this latest decision.

USDC Performance in the Crypto World

As it stands, USDC is currently the second largest crypto stablecoin, after Tether’s USDT, which is the first. To put this into perspective, while USDT has a market cap of $116.4 billion, Circle’s USDC has a market cap of $34.5 million, almost $100 billion difference in comparison.

Regardless, USDC continues to make its mark in the crypto space, particularly in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. According to data from DeFillma, USDC has supported 77 chains, while USDT has supported 76.

Main image created with DALL-E, chart from TradingView