Crypto Startup Circle To Shut Down Social Payment App

Announcements, News | June 14, 2019 By:

Crypto finance firm Circle will be closing its payment app Circle Pay to develop new crypto financial services.

In a blog post, Circle said that it will discontinue support for Circle Pay and will create new global crypto financial services for people to store and create value, earn money and make payments in a seamless way.

“Over its successful, five-year lifespan, Circle Pay was a pioneering social payment app,” Circle said. “Circle Pay has clarified the path forward by highlighting the robust, global demand for people to exchange value as seamlessly as they exchange information. However, that demand largely relied on interfacing with the traditional financial system and untokenized fiat currencies.”

Circle said that it will start terminating the operation of Circle Pay from July 8 and will fully deprecate all support on September 30.

“All Circle Pay customers should cash out their funds today,” Circle said. “Customers who currently hold Bitcoin in Circle Pay are also encouraged to send BTC funds to another wallet such as a Poloniex account. On July 8, Customers will no longer be able to add money or send money to anyone through their Circle Pay account. They will only be able to cash out funds to their linked card or bank account.”

Circle spokesman Josh Hawkins said in a statement that “Circle Pay is a popular social payment app that has seen significant organic growth over the years across the US and Europe. But now that we have USD Coin and an open, interoperable stablecoin standard through CENTRE, it makes sense to sunset our first-generation effort and transition full focus to wallet services that take a bigger step toward reaching our original vision for a free, open and transparent global payments network.”