Circle Internet Financial, Inc., the global financial technology company behind the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, will soon be making the token available on five additional blockchains, Chief Product Officer Nikhil Chandhok said on Wednesday at the company’s Converge22 conference.

See related article: U.S. Fed has growing interest in CBDCs, says Jeng at Crypto Council for Innovation

Fast facts

• USDC is expected to function on Arbitrum, NEAR, Optimism, and Polkadot by the end of the year, with compatibility with Cosmos expected by early 2023, Chandhok revealed.

• USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization behind USDT, according to CoinMarketCap. Both are pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar, and this backing has made them a popular entry point into crypto for traditional banking and finance.

• “Extending multi-chain support for USDC opens the door for institutions, exchanges, developers and more to innovate and have easier access to a trusted and stable digital dollar,” Circle’s vice president of product Joao Reginatto said in a press release on Wednesday.

• The latest multichain expansion will bring the total number of USDC-compatible blockchains to fourteen, with the digital assets already operable on Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, TRON, Algorand, Flow, Hedera, and Stellar.

• Circle also announced that it will begin implementation of a new Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol for USDC, helping with streamlining the transfer process of crypto assets across different blockchain ecosystems.

See related article: India’s WazirX to delist USDC, apply auto convert to Binance’s stablecoin