Circle helps Immersve bring digital dollars to everyday spending

Immersve was founded with a clear mission – to make digital assets as easy to spend as the money in your pocket. They saw that while blockchain held great promise in transforming traditional financial services, the currencies built on top of it hadn't yet become a practical part of people's everyday financial lives. 

People who held digital assets often found it cumbersome to use them for routine expenses. Typically, they had to sell their digital assets on an exchange and transfer the funds to a bank account before spending. This process was slow, expensive, and anything but seamless.

Businesses, on the other hand, were hesitant to accept digital assets directly. The volatility of most cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) made accepting them as payments  risky. The value of payments with these types of digital assets could fluctuate widely and the regulatory landscape for accepting such payments was complex and unclear. Merchants preferred to stick with traditional payment methods that, albeit cumbersome, were familiar and widely adopted by their peers.

This was a clear gap that was inhibiting the adoption of digital assets, and in it, Immersve saw an opportunity to give partners with Web3 wallets, dApps, and exchanges a turnkey solution to enable their users to spend digital currency in their everyday lives.

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Going mainstream with MasterCard

To bridge this gap, Immersve knew they needed to integrate digital assets with traditional payment networks (including regulatory approvals in key markets). They envisioned a system where individuals could spend their digital assets directly and merchants could receive payments in their local currency without changing their existing payment processes.

Evaluating the traditional financial services landscape, Immersve quickly identified Mastercard as a viable entrypoint to bringing this vision to life and worked diligently to become a principal member of the Mastercard network. This status allowed Immersve to develop a platform that enabled companies with Web3 applications to issue their own branded Mastercard and to process payments globally, putting them on the same footing as major banks. With access to Mastercard's vast network of over 90 million merchants worldwide, they were able to take one step closer to making digital assets part of everyday spending a reality. But, they still needed a stable, widely accepted digital currency to tie everything together. This is where Circle and USDC became a crucial part of the solution.

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Using USDC as a foundation for global payments

Circle's trusted stablecoin, USDC, was the ideal choice for Immersve's ambitions. USDC maintains a stable value relative to the US dollar so that it doesn't experience the wild price swings that affect many other cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH. This stability makes USDC perfect as a medium of exchange for everyday transactions where predictability, reliability and a stable store of value is essential.

Moreover, Circle had already partnered with Mastercard to enable USDC settlements. This existing relationship simplified the integration process, allowing Immersve to connect digital asset payments with the traditional financial system more efficiently. By collaborating with Circle, Immersve was able to leverage USDC's stability and Circle's robust infrastructure to facilitate seamless, secure transactions between users and merchants globally.