The international arm of Ant Group, the company backed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, plans to bring Circle’s USDC stablecoin onto its proprietary blockchain. The rollout will start once U.S. regulators certify the dollar-pegged token under the new federal rules, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the deal. The move would give USDC a link to a network that processed more than $1 trillion in global payments last year, a third of them settled on-chain. That scale could make Ant the largest overseas corporate user of a U.S.-issued stablecoin. Ant International is also applying for stablecoin licenses in Singapore, Hong Kong and Luxembourg, according to the report. The group wants regulated digital dollars, central bank digital currencies and tokenized bank deposits to sit side by side on its platform. The company’s blockchain currently supports tokenized assets from various financial institutions and has reportedly been working with the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital yuan. Circle shares rose nearly 3.8% in pre-market trading to $208.
