Speaking to CNBC’s Sara Eisen on the sidelines of the 2025 edition of the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Circle Internet Group’s (CRCL) Jeremy Allaire described Arc as “a financial OS for the Internet,” arguing that core financial workflows move in the chain and require predictable costs and performance.
He said Arc is built for payments, foreign exchange, lending and capital markets activity, with dollar-denominated fees, sub-second settlement and privacy controls meant to let businesses protect sensitive balances or flows when needed. The public testnet went live on October 28, with the mainnet targeted for 2026 after builders trialled smart contracts, transaction flows and token launches.
Read more: Circle, issuer of USDC, begins testing Arc Blockchain with large institutions on board
Allaire emphasized USDC as the practical bridge for these use cases. He pushed back on the idea that growth is flat, saying that use has grown through 2025 and that demand from emerging markets is “very significant”, led by firms looking to settle in dollars without the friction of legacy, cross-border banking. He highlighted the Middle East, where companies are using digital dollars to quickly move value across trading partners.
That focus aligns with Circle’s UAE plans. Allaire referred to regulatory steps that position the company to operate in the region and support institutions that want on-chain dollar rails. He also linked the momentum to policy clarity, saying recent US payment stablecoin legislation has helped larger companies integrate stablecoin payments, currency and credit workflows.
In terms of ecosystem breadth, Allaire said the Arc announcement involved well over 100 companies in banking, payments, big tech and artificial intelligence. He framed Arc’s business model as transactional and ecosystem-driven, with a long-term goal of broadly distributed operations and governance rather than a single-company walled garden.
The framework is straightforward: Arc provides a high-throughput environment for dollars for stablecoin-native funding, while USDC serves as the settlement and fee unit developers can plan around. Allaire’s message to businesses was that predictable costs, quick finality and compliance-friendly privacy can move more of the “financial guts” of commerce to programmable rails.
