Voyager Digital (VYGR.C) added Circle Internet Financial’s proprietary Circle Payment API (application programming interface) to their platform, allowing them to integrate platform services and payments into its Voyager crypto broker platform.
Earlier this year, the company announced their intention to acquire Circle Invest, the retail digital asset arm of Circle Internet Financial. The move increased Voyager’s customer base by more than 40,000 retail accounts, giving them a total of over 230,000 global users across all of its platforms. The majority of Circle’s customers made the shift over to the Voyager platform at the end of March, 2020.
“Adding Circle platform services and payments to our crypto broker platform enables us to broaden the available funding channels for Voyager accounts. These new services will give Voyager customers access to more options to fund their accounts through debit cards, credit cards and bank wires. As a result, Voyager customers will now have additional options to access all 40 of Voyager’s digital assets through our commission-free crypto broker trading platform. The addition of these new funding mechanisms will also make it easier for international customers to move fiat onto the Voyager platform, as we set our sight on global expansion,” said Steve Ehrlich, co-founder and chief executive officer of Voyager.
Voyager Digital was founded as a collaboration between Wall Street and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who saw the gap in the market where opaque exchanges and a steep learning curve for cryptocurrency trading and speculation could give way to a more transparent and cost-efficient crypto-asset trading platform.
The company is a broker of digital assets that provides both retail and institutional investors with a solution to trade their crypto. They offer customers safe custody on a broad selection of 40-different crypto-assets.
The latest coins, added earlier this month, include: Compound (COMP), Kyber, Dai and Celo, each of which enjoys the full complement of deposit, transfer and withdrawal functionality. The company has also recently beefed up their security, adding two-factor authentication to catch up with almost every other exchange.
Circle has introduced payments processing APIs and have combined the benefits of stablecoins and blockchain with traditional banking staples such as cards and banks. They also have their own stablecoin, USDC, which has recently met the $1 billion milestone, making it the second largest stablecoin behind Tether/USDT.
Yet, unlike Tether, USDC is issued by regulated financial institutions and fully backed by reserve assets, and redeemable on a one to one basis for US dollars. That means every USDC is a direct representative of United States dollar, which makes it superior to Tether or USDT in that regard at least, because USDT is not. If everyone holding USDT decided to call in their token, the coin would falter.
“We’re excited to expand the partnership with Voyager and play a key supporting role as the firm answers growing global demand for crypto assets and USD coin. Circle platform services enable industry innovators, like Voyager, to rapidly extend product offerings and reach more customers with payment methods that seamlessly bridge traditional financial networks and digital dollar stable coins, like USDC,” said Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and chief executive officer of Circle.
—Joseph Morton
