Fintech firm Circle brings social payments to the UK

Rage Review : Circle is a social payment application and digital currency startup founded in Boston, USA in 2013. It provides mobile applications for global users to make payments and remittances between various currencies. Last week, the financial technology company Circle announced that it would support pound payments on the social payment application. After the release of this initiative, British and American consumers can freely trade pounds and dollars without charging any fees. This will have a disruptive impact on the flow of funds in China and even the world. Circle will not make profits through various currency transfers, but will develop other functions such as developing the time value of funds to make profits, just like credit card loans.

Translation: Nicole

Last week, fintech company Circle announced support for British pound payments on its social payments app, using bitcoin and blockchain technology to conduct transactions.

Following the launch of U.S. dollar payments, Circle now allows individuals to pay in British pounds, easily overcoming currency barriers and continuing to do so without fees. The Boston-based company has reduced or eliminated currency restrictions for consumers in the more than 150 countries where Circle is available.

Jeremy Allaire

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said in an interview with Forbes:

"After this move is announced, British and American consumers can freely trade pounds and dollars with each other without charging any fees. This will have a disruptive impact on the flow of funds in China and around the world."

Circle has partnered with Barclays to provide the company with an account for consumers to store British pounds and to provide the infrastructure to transfer funds between UK bank accounts.

A Barclays spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters:

“We support the exploration of positive blockchain use cases that benefit both consumers and society.”

As a precedent for digital currency companies, the UK Market Conduct Authority (also the first company to obtain a Bitcoin license from New York) issued Circle an electronic money certificate, which Forbes reported allows Circle to hold British pounds, facilitate payments for consumer and commercial activities, operate a currency exchange and facilitate the circulation of British pounds globally. The magazine (Forbes) also noted that Circle received EU-wide authorization, allowing Circle to be issued throughout Europe.

Allaire told Forbes magazine:

“We launched in the UK first, which was the natural nature of the market and a great infrastructure tie-in, but now we can ‘passport’ the e-money certificate so that we can gradually extend it to circulation across Europe over the rest of the year!”

With Circle Payments, users can transfer money by sending personalized messages with pictures, emojis and animated graphics, just like Chinese social payment apps such as WeChat Pay and Alipay.

Allaire told Reuters:

“The operating philosophy (of Product and Operations co-founder and chairman Sean Neville) is that payments should serve the internet. That’s what we should all learn from China: the emergence of information, media and payment methods that make sense for everyone.”

500 million people in China use social payment methods, but such services have not really appeared in the West. Allaire said in an interview with TechCrunch:

“There are few major players yet and the opportunity is still wide open.”

However, he considers PayPal's Venmo, an innovative company that supports multiple payments, to be a current competitor in the US, although he believes PayPal is not yet able to achieve "payments everywhere like traditional web applications."

Allaire told Forbes that Circle's advantage is that it's not a closed system. "Venmo is only available to people who download it." In contrast, Circle users can send funds to any email address or phone number, regardless of whether the recipient has a Circle account.

Circle is launching an international app across multiple currencies, Allaire told Forbes:

“Circle is different from the closed U.S.-based Venmo product, which only allows one currency and only exists in one market.”

The ultimate goal of blockchain is to enable individuals to conduct transactions on applications.

Allaire told the magazine:

“We would love to see Venmo support blockchain technology, so that Circle users can pay Venmo users through QR codes or blockchain addresses, all for free. We also hope that other companies that provide this service - whether it is banks or other payment applications or financial institutions - will accept these terms, so that everyone in the world can transact with multiple mediums of exchange.”

TechCrunch reports that Circle, which has raised nearly $75 billion, is not yet profitable because it doesn’t charge any fees. Allaire told the publication that digital money transfers shouldn’t be charged fees, and instead, a socially useful app would have consumers pay for other features once they rely on Circle for their primary money transfers.

Allaire told TechCrunch:

“We really, really want to make it free to receive money, it’s just a matter of updating the database. We don’t think charging is a viable business model. Financial services companies can charge for other valuable products (future products we want to explore and build), but payers want it to be free, or close to free, all the time.”

Allaire told Forbes that Circle sees the potential to increase revenue from the time value of money, "which is 'I don't have money right now, but I need money right now, and I'm willing to pay a certain amount to get it right now, which is a credit card, a loan. The other side is 'I have money right now, but I don't need it right now, and if someone is willing to pay a certain amount to lend me my money for a certain period of time, I'm willing to lend it to them.' In the consumer and enterprise economy, the time value of money creates real economic value. That's what we love to see.