Circle has become the first stablecoin issuer to receive a French license for USDC and EURC to debut in the Union under one of the world’s most comprehensive regulatory regimes for digital assets – MiCA.
Circle announced that its dollar and euro stablecoins, USDC and EURC, issuance is officially live in the EU in compliance with the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.
To achieve compliance, the stablecoin issuer obtained an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from the French banking regulator, Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR).
With the new license in place, the Circle Mint solution is now officially available for business customers in Europe. Circle Mint targets enterprise businesses and wholesale distributors minting large volumes of USDC. It is typically used by exchanges, institutional traders, wallet providers, banks, and consumer app companies.
With local banking capabilities, Circle Mint France provides near-instant and cost-effective access to mint and redeem USDC and EURC not only in France but also throughout the European market.
“Since our founding, Circle has sought to build durable, compliant, and well-regulated infrastructure for stablecoins, and our adherence to MiCA, which represents one of the most comprehensive crypto regulatory regimes in the world, is a huge milestone in bringing digital currency into mainstream scale and acceptance.”
Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Circle
At present, USDC is the only token out of the top 10 stablecoins by market capitalization to become MiCA-compliant. Its market cap is $32B, second only to Tether (USDT). So far, there is no official information on whether Tether has also applied for the EMI license, which would give it the ability to operate in the EEA.
EU’s restrictive stablecoin rules took effect on June 30. They do not only require appropriate authorization to operate in the EU trading bloc but also place strict limits on stablecoin transaction numbers and values. For instance, the new MiCA rules ban stablecoins from having over 1 million daily transactions that pay for goods or services both off- and on-chain.
