Stablecoin issuer Circle agreed to pay $400 million in stock for Singapore-based cross-border payments company Tazapay in one of its largest publicly disclosed acquisitions to date.
The USDC issuer will calculate the number of shares using their volume-weighted average closing price during the 20 trading days before the deal closes, according to a regulatory filing. The price will be adjusted for Tazapay’s debt, transaction expenses and cash.
Tazapay is a business-to-business payments infrastructure firm that connects payment companies and financial institutions to more than 60 banking and fintech partners, allowing them to collect and pay out money through local rails in over 100 markets, according to its website.
The company processes more than $25 billion in annualized payment volume, with approximately 60% of transactions already involving stablecoins, Circle said.
Tazapay said in March that it served more than 1,000 companies and fintech firms across 30 countries and had doubled revenue for three consecutive years. That came alongside a Series B funding round extension led by Circle Ventures.
The firm holds licenses or registrations in Singapore, Canada, Australia and the U.S., with applications underway in the European Union, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.
Stablecoins can move across blockchains globally, but turning them into local currency still requires regulated intermediary companies, bank accounts and payout connections in individual markets. Tazapay would give Circle much of that last-mile infrastructure instead of requiring it to build the network country by country.
Circle was already familiar with the business. Tazapay has helped design Circle Payments Network since 2025, according to Circle’s acquisition announcement.
The purchase continues a series of acquisitions from Circle. It paid approximately $100 million for Hashnote, the company behind tokenized money-market fund USYC, in 2025. It bought web3 infrastructure provider Cybavo in 2022. The acquistion of Tazapay is Circle’s most expensive since its 2018 purchase of crypto exchange Poloniex.
Circle also paid $209.9 million in stock for Coinbase’s remaining half of the Centre Consortium, which controlled USDC’s intellectual property, in 2023.
It has separately acquired payments software company Elements, blockchain consensus technology Malachite and, in July, nearly 1,000 blockchain patents from IBM.
The Tazapay acquisition is expected to close in 2027 and requires regulatory approvals, including from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Tazapay’s services, pricing and support are expected to remain unchanged while the transaction is pending.
CRCL shares are down 2.7% in today’s trading session to $99.3. Year-to-date they’ve risen over 25%.
Neither Circle nor Tazapay responded to CoinDesk’s request for comment by publication.