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.

The European Payments Council implemented Version 1.1 of its Verification of Payee scheme rulebook on September 20, 2026, clarifying operations, API specifications and security after feedback from live deployment. Its directory service, operated with SWIFT, has also completed a live transition supporting provider reachability and routing. The changes come as non-eurozone EU payment providers work toward a July 9, 2027, compliance deadline. Required under the EU Instant Payments Regulation for both instant and standard SEPA credit transfers, Verification of Payee checks recipient details before authorization and must be offered free to users. The inter-provider exchange has a five-second operational maximum and can return a match, close match, no match or verification-not-possible result. A close match supplies the verified recipient name for the payer to review. A warning does not necessarily prevent a transfer: liability depends on whether a payer proceeds despite it or a provider fails to perform a required check.

The European Payments Council has issued Version 1.1 of its Verification of Payee rulebook, effective September 20, 2026. The update addresses operational issues identified after launch, clarifies API specifications and refines the API Security Framework. It follows Eurozone deadlines requiring payment service providers to receive instant euro transfers from January 2025 and to send them and offer payee verification from October 2025. Under Regulation (EU) 2024/886, instant euro credit transfers must complete within 10 seconds and be available around the clock. Payee verification occurs before a transfer is executed, adding a separate real-time exchange to the payment process. Together, the requirements challenge legacy systems built around scheduled batch processing. Non-eurozone EU providers face receiving and sending deadlines in 2027, while national supervisors are collecting transaction, fee and decline metrics to monitor compliance.