Danal joins Circle as the first domestic payment company to become an official partner…pursues USDC payment infrastructure

Danal said on the 18th that it has joined Circle's official partner program, the 'Circle Alliance Program (CAP).' It is the first domestic payment company to participate in CAP.

Danal will work with Circle to pursue the construction of next-generation payment infrastructure based on USDC. The two companies have been discussing cooperation on domestic stablecoin payment services since early this year, and completed tests of USDC issuance, burning, and remittance using Circle Mint and the blockchain network 'Arc' in a sandbox environment.

Recently, Danal was finally approved as an official CAP partner and was listed as a partner on Circle's official website. As discussions on the institutionalization of domestic stablecoins become more active, the two companies plan to cooperate to address the limitations of existing payment systems, such as high fees, complex intermediary structures, and settlement delays.

Danal said that, through its participation in CAP, it will prioritize reviewing the construction of USDC payment infrastructure that complies with domestic regulatory environments. Structures that reduce intermediaries to lower costs and global payment models that simplify cross-border payment networks are the main subjects under review, and the first application service is scheduled to be the foreigner prepaid card 'KONDA.'

The two companies will also verify ways to apply the real-time settlement structure, a strength of on-chain payments, to merchant environments. Through this, they plan to reduce the time gap between payment and settlement and improve merchants' cash flow stability. In addition, they intend to combine the standard stablecoin USDC with Danal's global payment network to overcome cross-border payment barriers.

A Danal official said, "Cooperation between Danal, which clearly understands domestic and international markets and regulatory environments and has relevant service experience, and Circle, a global stablecoin issuer, will be the starting point for the emergence of a Korea-centered stablecoin payment standard," and added, "We will closely verify the construction of a high-efficiency, real-time, global payment infrastructure and secure technological leadership in the next-generation digital payment market at the center of change."