Binance Takes a $100 Million Stake in Circle and Locks In USDC for Five Years
Binance has bought $100 million of Circle stock. The two companies also signed a new five-year commercial agreement to push USDC, Circle’s dollar stablecoin, across the exchange and into emerging markets.
The equity part is simple. Binance took 1,237,011 Class A shares of Circle Internet Group (NYSE: CRCL) in a private placement at $80.84 each, about 5% under the September 17 close of $85.09. The deal closed that day and was announced on September 22. Binance can’t sell, transfer or hedge the shares for up to two years, or until it exits the commercial agreement, but it keeps its voting rights. CRCL rose close to 2% premarket on the news.
The money runs the other way
The commercial deal is where cash actually changes hands, and it flows from Circle to Binance. Circle will pay Binance a monthly incentive fee, set as a percentage of the USDC held through Circle’s Modular Smart Contract Wallet service. Binance promotes USDC on its platform and helps take it into markets where dollar access is hard to come by. Circle supplies the infrastructure for holding and using the coin.
None of this is new. In November 2024 Circle paid Binance $60.25 million upfront plus monthly fees on a two-year deal. Another agreement followed in August 2025. The five-year contract replaces both. Either side can still walk away under conditions set out in the agreement.
So Circle pays the exchange to distribute its product, and the exchange now owns a piece of the company paying it. Binance’s fee grows with USDC balances. Its stake grows with Circle’s value. Both point the same way, which is the point.
Why Binance needs a dollar
Binance used to have its own. BUSD was issued by Paxos under the Binance brand until New York’s financial regulator ordered Paxos to stop minting it in February 2023. Since then the exchange has needed a regulated dollar token to lean on. For a venue that wants to look clean to banks and regulators, USDC is the obvious pick.
For Circle, distribution is everything. USDC sits at roughly $75 billion in circulation. Tether’s USDT is still much bigger, and a lot of Tether’s lead was built on exchange liquidity, Binance’s included. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire called Binance the most widely used wallet in the world for dollar stablecoins. Paying for five years of access to that wallet goes straight at the ground where Tether is strongest.
Richard Teng, Binance’s co-CEO, pitched it as a reach story. A trusted digital dollar, he said, should be available to anyone with a phone.
The emerging-markets bet
That line about phones is the interesting part. In much of Latin America, Africa and South Asia people use stablecoins as savings. They park dollars and leave them. If Binance steers those users toward USDC balances sitting in Circle’s wallet infrastructure, Circle gets sticky float to earn interest on and Binance gets paid every month for keeping it there.
The cost lands on Circle’s income statement. Circle makes most of its money from interest on the reserves backing USDC, and it already hands a large cut of that to Coinbase. A five-year fee commitment to Binance adds another big partner to the payout list. Circle is betting the extra balances outrun the extra fees.
Five years is a long time in crypto. Circle has decided it’s worth paying for.