ACI Worldwide and Circle Pilot USDC Alongside Colombia’s Bre-B Through Connetic, Outside Its Central Infrastructure
Oct. 28, 2026 • Article • Digital Assets
ACI Worldwide and Circle announced a pilot on October 27, 2026, involving USDC and connectivity to Colombia’s Bre-B instant payments system. The integration runs through ACI Connetic, a payments orchestration platform, rather than embedding USDC in Bre-B’s central infrastructure. There is no indication that Colombia’s central bank has adopted USDC as a settlement asset for the national network.
The distinction matters because ACI also supplies technology for Bre-B’s central directory and real-time clearing engine. Bre-B launched in October 2025 and handled more than 500 million transactions within five months. Connetic is designed to bring traditional payment rails and digital asset networks together without requiring banks to replace legacy core ledgers. ACI says the platform can support other digital assets and liquidity providers, so the pilot does not make USDC its exclusive option. The arrangement tests a vendor-level connection alongside an established public payment system, not a change to that system’s settlement rules.
ACI Worldwide and Circle announced a pilot on October 27, 2026, involving Circle’s USDC and connectivity to Colombia’s Bre-B instant payments system. The test runs through ACI Connetic, a payments orchestration platform, rather than placing USDC in Bre-B’s central infrastructure. That distinction is central to understanding the announcement: the companies are testing how a digital asset network can sit alongside an established national payment rail, not reporting that the rail has adopted a stablecoin for settlement.
ACI has a separate role in Bre-B’s infrastructure, which helps explain the attention around the pilot. Colombia’s national instant payments system uses ACI Worldwide’s Digital Central Infrastructure for its central directory and real-time clearing engine. The USDC test, however, is at the Connetic vendor-orchestration layer alongside connectivity to Bre-B. The information available about the pilot does not establish USDC as a central bank-mandated or formally adopted settlement asset within Bre-B.
Where the Pilot Sits
ACI Connetic is designed to bring different payment methods and networks together. Its scope includes traditional account-to-account rails, card payments and digital asset networks. As a cloud-native orchestration engine, it is intended to let participating banks use those connections without overhauling their legacy core ledgers.
Orchestration is distinct from the operation of a payment system’s central clearing infrastructure. A platform can coordinate access to several networks without changing the rules or settlement arrangements of any one network. In this case, ACI’s involvement in both Connetic and Bre-B-related infrastructure should not be read as evidence that the USDC pilot changes how Bre-B itself settles payments.
ACI has also specified that Connetic is technology-agnostic. It is built to support multiple alternative digital assets and liquidity providers, rather than being exclusive to Circle’s USDC. The announced pilot therefore illustrates one possible use of the platform, not a commitment to make USDC its sole digital asset option.
Bre-B’s Scale and Governance
Bre-B went live on October 6, 2025. Within five months of deployment, it had handled more than 500 million transactions and surpassed 100 million registered payment keys across 33 million unique users. Those figures describe a payment network that had already reached substantial scale before the ACI-Circle pilot was announced.
A payment key is an identifier registered for use with the instant payments system; the reported count of keys is separate from the count of unique users. The network’s scale makes the boundary between its central infrastructure and an outside orchestration service particularly important when assessing claims about integration.
Bre-B is operated and regulated by Colombia’s central bank, Banco de la República, and supervised by the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia. Its statutory roadmap extends through 2029. Nothing in the available details says those authorities have designated USDC as a settlement asset for Bre-B. Describing the arrangement as a test alongside the national rail, rather than a change to that rail, preserves that distinction.
Circle’s Regional Context and Next Steps
Circle has been expanding its Latin American presence ahead of the pilot. Its regional activity includes integrating USDC into fintech ecosystems such as Argentina’s Mercado Pago, with a focus on demand for remittances and dollar-denominated savings. That background helps explain Circle’s interest in payment connectivity in the region, but it does not establish a new consumer product or a live Bre-B payment service arising from this test.
Craig Ramsey heads global account-to-account payments at ACI Worldwide, while Kash Razzaghi is Circle’s chief commercial officer. Their roles place the announcement within the companies’ respective payments and commercial businesses; the available information does not attribute a statement about the pilot’s results to either executive.
Circle has scheduled its third-quarter 2026 earnings webcast for November 4, 2026, when executive management is expected to address its Latin American expansion and core banking integration initiatives. That is a prospective discussion, not confirmation of an outcome for the pilot. Circle shares dipped more than 1% in early trading following the joint announcement. For now, the supported development is a vendor-level USDC connectivity test alongside Bre-B—not adoption of USDC by Colombia’s sovereign instant payment system.
Ramp partnered with Stripe and Bridge in July 2026 to deploy stablecoin rails for business bill payments and yield-bearing stablecoin accounts funded through standard fiat bank accounts. The arrangement shows how stablecoins can be incorporated into familiar payment workflows without requiring businesses to fund every transaction with digital assets. The economics depend on more than the cost of moving a token on-chain. Stripe charges merchants 1.5% for stablecoin checkout transactions, versus its standard card-processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30; neither figure establishes the price of Ramp’s bill-payment service. Businesses receiving fiat may also face foreign-exchange and off-ramp costs, typically 0.3% to 2.0% when converting into local banking systems. Domestic clearing networks and compliance checks remain part of end-to-end delivery. Bridge’s issuance and transfer tools, alongside its conditional U.S. trust-bank approval, illustrate the infrastructure behind those payments—but not the elimination of every payment cost.
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets through an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. Integration documentation published on 26 October 2026 describes a multi-BIN model that combines issuing sponsorship, transaction authorization, compliance screening and fiat clearing. The approach lets participating providers build stablecoin-backed card products while merchants continue to receive conventional fiat payments through Visa’s network. StraitsX says its card gross transaction value rose 40-fold year on year from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, while cards issued across Asia increased 83-fold. On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly card transaction volume of $310 million to $438 million through October 2026. The company’s stated $6 billion annualized card transaction figure is distinct from its cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume. StraitsX and Visa have also scheduled demonstrations of agentic payments for November 2026.
ACI Worldwide and Circle announced a pilot on October 27, 2026, involving USDC and connectivity to Colombia’s Bre-B instant payments system. The integration runs through ACI Connetic, a payments orchestration platform, rather than embedding USDC in Bre-B’s central infrastructure. There is no indication that Colombia’s central bank has adopted USDC as a settlement asset for the national network. The distinction matters because ACI also supplies technology for Bre-B’s central directory and real-time clearing engine. Bre-B launched in October 2025 and handled more than 500 million transactions within five months. Connetic is designed to bring traditional payment rails and digital asset networks together without requiring banks to replace legacy core ledgers. ACI says the platform can support other digital assets and liquidity providers, so the pilot does not make USDC its exclusive option. The arrangement tests a vendor-level connection alongside an established public payment system, not a change to that system’s settlement rules.
Ripple received final approval on 26 October 2026 for Ripple National Trust Bank, giving it a federally chartered institution for fiduciary and custody activities. The charter does not authorize commercial deposits or loans, and it does not transfer issuance of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to the new bank. RLUSD issuance remains with Standard Custody & Trust Company under New York State Department of Financial Services supervision. BNY is the primary custodian of the dollar deposits and U.S. Treasury reserves backing the stablecoin. The arrangement separates a federal custody role from state-supervised issuance. It also comes as the OCC implements the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin rules and faces a lawsuit from the Independent Community Bankers of America challenging its authority to grant national trust charters to crypto firms. Ripple has separately announced an expanded partnership with BNY and Robinhood focused on institutional custody capabilities and exploring tokenized trade finance.
Stripe confirmed in October 2026 that it plans to expand its Bridge- and Visa-powered stablecoin card issuing program from 18 initial countries to more than 100 by the end of the year. The planned rollout spans Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. It follows Stripe’s February 2025 acquisition of Bridge, whose APIs connect stablecoin transfers with fiat accounts and bank payouts. Stripe has also made Open USD available to businesses in Stripe Financial Accounts alongside USDC. Its broader stablecoin infrastructure combines Bridge’s conversion tools with Stripe’s existing payment and treasury network and embedded wallets from Privy. Lead Bank supports the card program as a financial institution partner and BIN sponsor. A separate deployment by Ramp uses Bridge APIs and Privy wallets to let businesses pay vendors in stablecoins using funds from fiat bank accounts. Together, the developments show how Stripe is assembling stablecoin services for business payments, while the planned geographic expansion remains unfinished.
Project Agorá settled approximately CHF 800,000 in live, multi-currency transactions during a July 2026 testing phase. The work examined a cross-border payment model that places tokenised commercial bank deposits on a shared ledger while holding tokenised central bank reserves on jurisdictional ledgers. Five central banks participated directly in live-reserve settlement, although the project’s wider central-bank group has since expanded to eight with the Bank of Canada’s entry. The project reports an average settlement time of 80 seconds across six currencies and uses smart contracts to run anti-money laundering, sanctions and fraud checks simultaneously. Legal analyses found that tokenisation did not change the underlying character of deposits or reserves in participating jurisdictions. The findings support further work on deposit-based wholesale settlement, but the supplied research does not establish that the approach outperforms stablecoins. The Eurosystem plans to draw on Agorá’s architecture for Projects Pontes and Appia.