A European bank is saying goodbye to the legacy payment messaging system Swift and will now use the stablecoin USDC to power cross-border transactions.
Bank Frick, founded in 1998, is one of the most crypto-friendly in Liechtenstein, offering custody and trading for Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and seven other digital assets.
Now, the bank says it’s fully switched to USDC and will use the stablecoin to move money across borders on behalf of its clients.
“With the addition of USDC, we enable our customers to process USD payments quickly and token-based. Compared to the classic SWIFT procedure, the processing time is significantly reduced.”
Coinbase and Circle launched USDC in late 2018. The coin is designed to be pegged to the US dollar, which gives banks an opportunity to capitalize on both the transfer speed of digital assets and the reliability of USD.
Bank Frick is the only Liechtenstein bank with acquiring licenses from Visa and MasterCard. It provides a fully integrated offering of classic and blockchain banking services.
The bank’s varied clients include fintechs, asset managers, payment service providers, family offices, fund promoters, pension funds and fiduciaries.