How Arc Supports Cross-Border Payments | Arc Blueprints
Summary
Arc enables a new model for global money movement that offers a stark improvement over the slow, expensive, and operationally complex solutions that exist today. Remittances, global payouts, and trade finance will soon go onchain and benefit from replacing fragmented legacy rails with infrastructure that is faster, more transparent, and global by default. This shift is possible thanks to Arc’s unique ability to deliver near-instant transactions that can simplify FX and transaction fees for end-users.
Arc1 is a stablecoin-native Layer-1 blockchain designed to unite the financial innovation happening in the onchain world with real-world economic activity, serving as the Economic OS for the internet. With sub-second, deterministic finality and fiat-denominated gas fees paid in stablecoins, Arc provides a predictable, real-time settlement layer for global transactions using programmable money.
In this post, we explore how Arc enables a new approach to cross-border payments. An approach that replaces slow, opaque legacy rails with smart contract logic and near-instant onchain settlement designed for real economic use.
The challenges of traditional cross-border payments
Cross-border payments remain one of the most complex parts of the financial system. According to the Bank for International Settlements, international bank payments commonly take two to five days to reach final settlement as they move through correspondent banking chains, batch cut-off times, and manual reconciliation processes.
Costs are also high and unpredictable. Fees accumulate across correspondent banks, FX desks, and payment processors, while exchange-rate spreads are often opaque. The World Bank estimates that the global average cost of a $200 remittance remained around 6–7% in 2025. These structural inefficiencies make cross-border payments expensive to operate and difficult to optimize.
For businesses operating across borders, these costs compound as they expand into new corridors. Each route typically requires new banking relationships, prefunding arrangements, and bespoke compliance workflows. Settlement timelines are opaque, reconciliation is manual, and finance teams lack real-time visibility into transaction status, timing, and final settlement — making global expansion slow, capital-intensive, and operationally complex.
Developers building cross-border payment products inherit these same constraints. Legacy payment rails rely on fragmented, outdated infrastructure that was never designed for programmable workflows or real-time settlement. As a result, developers are forced to stitch together market-by-market integrations, limiting product flexibility and making it difficult to build modern payment experiences that scale globally.
The benefits of onchain cross-border payments
Luckily, money is evolving into a programmable medium. Onchain settlement transforms reconciliation from a manual process into a programmable one, removing many of the structural limitations of legacy systems and delivering better outcomes for users worldwide.
For cross-border payments, this shift can replace multi-day settlement windows with near-instant finality, consolidate fragmented intermediaries into a single settlement layer, and enable developers to design global payment experiences as software rather than stitching together banking integrations market by market. Onchain payments also increase transparency and auditability, allowing participants to track settlement in real time.
How Arc supports onchain cross-border payments
Arc brings these onchain benefits to life through an Economic OS that combines sub-second finality, predictable gas fees paid in stablecoins, a native FX primitive, and opt-in privacy features to meet compliance requirements. Together, these capabilities make Arc an enterprise-grade settlement layer for the most important cross-border transactions, from consumer remittances to global payroll to international trade.
The table below summarizes the key differences between legacy cross-border payment systems and onchain payments on Arc:
These differences translate directly into how Arc can be used in practice. Below are three core cross-border payment use cases where Arc’s onchain advantages can materially change speed, cost, and operational complexity.
Remittance platforms for consumer transfers
Consumer remittance platforms operate in a high-volume, low-margin environment where delays, fees, and lack of transparency directly impact user trust. Traditional remittance flows rely on multiple intermediaries, batch settlement, and opaque FX pricing, resulting in multi-day delivery times and costs that disproportionately affect small-value transfers.
Arc replaces these fragmented flows with near-instant, deterministic settlement on a single onchain layer. Predictable, fiat-denominated gas fees make even small remittance amounts economically viable, an important improvement when the average individual remittance is valued around $200–$300 (with an estimated total of $857 billion in remittances in 2023). Gas abstraction allows platforms to hide blockchain complexity entirely, enabling user experiences that feel familiar while funds settle onchain in real time.
Payout systems for marketplaces, gig workers, and global payroll
Platforms paying workers and partners across borders face operational complexity at scale. Legacy payout systems depend on local banking rails, batch processing, and cut-off times, creating delays, reconciliation challenges, and unpredictable costs for finance teams managing global operations.
Arc enables programmable, bulk payouts that settle in a single onchain flow, 24 hours a day. Earnings can be distributed directly in stablecoins, reducing reliance on local banking infrastructure and eliminating batch settlement delays. Predictable fees and fast, deterministic settlement give finance teams clearer visibility into cash flows and treasury positions. And developers can define payout rules (e.g., timing, amounts, recipients, and currency conversion) to be executed programmatically and settled on Arc.
Trade finance platforms with tokenized invoices and automated onchain settlement
Trade finance workflows are often constrained by manual processes, delayed settlement, and fragmented coordination between buyers, suppliers, and financial institutions. Even when invoices and receivables are digitized, settlement often remains slow and operationally intensive, limiting liquidity and increasing counterparty risk.
Arc can support tokenized invoices and receivables as programmable assets, enabling automated settlement through atomic delivery-versus-payment flows. Native FX and multi-currency support can be embedded directly into transactions, while deterministic finality provides the certainty required for enterprise-grade accounting, reconciliation, and auditability. Together, these capabilities allow trade finance platforms to reduce settlement risk, unlock faster liquidity, and streamline cross-border commerce.
Arc takes onchain cross-border payments a step further
Arc is built for real economic activity where money is programmable end-to-end. Gas fees paid in stablecoins align blockchain costs with real-world accounting. Deterministic finality means payments complete with certainty rather than lingering in probabilistic “pending” states. Native FX primitives and compliance-ready architecture make Arc suitable for regulated flows and enterprise-grade scale.
Together, these properties give builders a new foundation for global money movement. Teams can build remittance apps, payout systems, and settlement platforms on stablecoin-native rails, eliminating legacy payment friction while retaining predictability and compliance-readiness.
Use Arc as the Economic OS for the internet. Get started by visiting the docs and sharing your ideas with the community. You can also follow Arc on X to stay in the loop with the latest developments.
1 Arc testnet is offered by Circle Technology Services, LLC ("CTS"). CTS is a software provider and does not provide regulated financial or advisory services. You are solely responsible for services you provide to users, including obtaining any necessary licenses or approvals and otherwise complying with applicable laws.
Arc has not been reviewed or approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
The product features described in these materials are for informational purposes only. All product features may be modified, delayed, or cancelled without prior notice, at any time and at the sole discretion of Circle Technology Services, LLC. Nothing herein constitutes a commitment, warranty, guarantee or investment advice.