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Visa announced a partnership today with Circle Internet Financial — one of the firms behind Ethereum-based stablecoin U.S. Dollar Coin (USDC) — to add USDC payment capability into Visa credit cards.

According to Forbes, Circle will work with select Visa credit card issuers to integrate USDC software into their platforms to send and receive USDC payments. 

“This will be the first corporate card that will allow businesses to be able to spend a balance of USDC,” Visa’s Head of Crypto Cuy Sheffield told Forbes.  “And so we think that this will significantly increase the utility that USDC can have for Circle’s business clients.” 

Eventually, Visa-supported businesses will be able to send USDC payments internationally to other Visa-supported businesses, according to Forbes. The funds will get converted to the national currency and can then be spent anywhere that accepts Visa. 

The partnership also has implications for cryptocurrency wallet providers, 25 of which Visa is already working with through its Fast Track program, a fintech accelerator. Fast Track members will now be able to pilot their own USDC integration initiatives.

Other wallet providers — like Blockfi, which announced yesterday that it would launch a Visa card early next year — will be able to use USDC in the first quarter of 2021, Forbes reports.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch has raised $12 million in Series A funding.

The round was facilitated through a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) sale, 1inch co-founder and CEO Sergej Kunz told The Block. SAFT is a kind of investment contract which promises the delivery of tokens at a future date.

1inch’s SAFT round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from ParaFi Capital, Blockchain Capital, Nima Capital, and Spartan Capital Securities, among others.

The funds will go toward 1inch’s team expansion (it now counts 28 people) and new product and protocol launches, Kunz told The Block.

“We are soon going to announce our product roadmap for the next two years. This includes a lightweight, very gas-efficient limit order protocol and an improved liquidity protocol.”

1inch is a liquidity aggregator, which connects several DEXes onto one platform. It then helps users get the best price for an optimized trade via supported DEXes. 1inch recently also launched its own automated market maker (AMM) protocol Mooniswap. AMM is a type of DEX protocol that relies on algorithms to price assets, unlike on order books on centralized exchanges.

In the near future, 1inch also plans to release its own token, which was first announced in August. Kunz said code is written, and the 1inch Foundation is also in place, which would issue the token, but there are some “bottlenecks” that need to be cleared.

“First, we have to stay clean from the regulatory side,” said Kunz. “Second, we need to get the code audited by several parties. Right now, seven companies are auditing our contracts and our implementation. We await their results.”

On the regulatory side, Kunz said the token would be registered with a regulator, without disclosing specific details. “The independent board of the 1inch Foundation, a Cayman Islands foundation company, intends to support the adoption of 1INCH tokens by the permissionless blockchain-based decentralized 1inch Network,” he said, adding:

“The 1INCH tokens are not intended to be securities…or an investment. The 1INCH tokens are intended to be used for their consumptive purposes on the 1inch Network, the 1INCH token protocols, and other applications that third parties may develop utilizing the 1INCH tokens and/or the permissionless blockchain-based decentralized 1inch Network.”

Kunz said the token could also be used for staking and participating in governance functions of 1inch protocols by all holders, including investors.

The Series A brings 1inch’s total funding to date to $14.8 million. In August, the aggregator raised $2.8 million in seed funding, which was also a SAFT round, Kunz now told The Block.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.