USDC-issuer Circle has rolled out a new compliance tool designed to help companies build on-chain.
The “Compliance Engine” will automatically integrate with Circle’s programmable smart wallets designed for developers, says Jeremy Allaire, the firm’s chief executive.
“We’ve built up tremendous capabilities in this area over the past decade, and we’re now taking those capabilities and exposing them to developers and operations teams that are building financial applications on-chain.
This includes our new Transaction Screening tool to detect risky and suspect transactions, our Transaction Monitoring tool to help identify potential high-risk behaviors and our new Travel Rule service, which helps companies maintain compliance with global travel rule requirements for large onchain transactions.”
This summer, USDC and Circle’s euro-pegged stablecoin EURC achieved compliance with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulations.
MiCA is upcoming EU legislation that will provide rules covering the supervision, consumer protection and environmental safeguards of crypto assets.
The law includes measures that aim to reduce financial crimes including market manipulation, money laundering and terrorist financing, and it places stablecoin issuers under the European Banking Authority while requiring them to hold sufficient liquid reserves. It’s scheduled to take effect in December 2024.
USDC aims to maintain a 1:1 peg to the US dollar and is the second-largest stablecoin with a market cap of $36.06 billion at time of writing.