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Key Takeaways
- Circle will pay $400 million in stock for Tazapay, its largest acquisition since Poloniex in 2018, pending regulatory approvals including from Singapore.
- Tazapay processes more than $25 billion in annualized payment volume, roughly 60% of which already involves stablecoins.
- The deal continues Circle’s acquisition pattern, following purchases of Hashnote, Cybavo, Centre Consortium, Elements and Malachite, plus IBM’s blockchain patents.
Circle agreed to acquire Singapore-based cross-border payments company Tazapay for $400 million in stock, according to a regulatory filing. The deal is Circle’s most expensive acquisition since it bought crypto exchange Poloniex in 2018 and gives the USDC issuer regulated payment infrastructure in more than 100 markets.
Deal Structure And Terms
Circle will calculate the number of shares owed based on the volume-weighted average closing price of its stock over the 20 trading days before the deal closes, according to the regulatory filing.
That price will then be adjusted for Tazapay’s outstanding debt, transaction expenses and cash on hand, a structure designed to account for changes in Circle’s share price and Tazapay’s balance sheet between signing and closing.
The transaction is expected to close in 2027 and requires regulatory approvals, including from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Circle said Tazapay’s services, pricing, and customer support are expected to continue unchanged while the deal is pending, a standard commitment meant to reassure existing business partners during the approval process.
What Tazapay Brings To Circle
Tazapay is a business-to-business payments infrastructure company that connects payment firms and financial institutions to more than 60 banking and fintech partners, according to its website. That network lets its clients collect and pay out money through local banking rails in over 100 markets.
The company processes more than $25 billion in annualized payment volume, and roughly 60% of that volume already involves stablecoins, Circle said. Tazapay holds licenses or registrations in Singapore, Canada, Australia and the U.S., with applications pending in the European Union, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.
The acquisition addresses a structural gap in stablecoin payments. Tokens like USDC can move across blockchains globally without friction, but converting them into local currency still requires regulated intermediaries, local bank accounts and payout connections in each individual market.
Buying Tazapay gives Circle much of that last-mile infrastructure directly, rather than requiring the company to build licensed payment rails market by market.
Circle Ventures’ Earlier Bet On Tazapay
Circle was already familiar with Tazapay’s business before the acquisition. Tazapay has worked on the design of Circle Payments Network since 2025, according to Circle’s announcement of the deal.
Circle Ventures, the company’s investment arm, led a Series B funding round extension for Tazapay in March. At the time, Tazapay said it served more than 1,000 companies and fintech firms across 30 countries and had doubled its revenue for three consecutive years.
That earlier investment gave Circle direct visibility into Tazapay’s operations well before the two companies reached an acquisition agreement.
Part Of A Broader Acquisition Pattern
The Tazapay deal continues a string of acquisitions Circle has made to build out its infrastructure. The company paid approximately $100 million for Hashnote, the firm behind tokenized money-market fund USYC, in 2025.
It bought web3 infrastructure provider Cybavo in 2022, and in 2023 it paid $209.9 million in stock for Coinbase’s remaining half of the Centre Consortium, which had controlled USDC’s intellectual property.
Circle has also acquired payments software company Elements and blockchain consensus technology Malachite, and in July it acquired nearly 1,000 blockchain patents from IBM.
Against that backdrop, the $400 million Tazapay deal represents Circle’s largest publicly disclosed acquisition since Poloniex in 2018, underscoring how much larger Circle’s deal-making capacity has become as a public company.
Deal Timeline And Market Reaction
Circle’s stock, trading under the ticker CRCL, fell 2.7% on the day the deal was announced, to $99.30. The shares remain up more than 25% for the year despite the daily decline, suggesting the acquisition did not meaningfully alter investors’ broader view of the stock.
Circle and Tazapay had not issued additional public comment on the transaction beyond the regulatory filing and acquisition announcement as of publication.
