Voyager Onboards 40,000 Circle Invest Customers
Crypto trade service firm, Voyager Digital Canada, has completed its acquisition of Circle’s retail-facing investment app.
On April 3, Voyager announced it had onboarded Circle Invest’s more than 40,000 accounts onto its platform — excluding residents of New York, North Carolina, and Alaska. Voyager now reports a user base of more than 200,000 in total.
Circle Invest was sold in exchange for a 4% stake in Voyager in February.
Voyager onboards Circle Invest clients
Voyager offers commission-free trading on 34 crypto assets and USD.
The firm will continue to offer Circle Invest’s collections feature — allowing customers to purchase baskets of assets grouped by common attributes and weighted by market cap.
Users can also earn interest between 2% and 6% interest on Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Dash (DASH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the firm’s native Voyager Token (VGX), and stablecoins USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT), and True USD (TUSD).
Voyager is licensed as a Money Service Business with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and is publicly traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange.
FinCEN mandates that Voyager must hold Circle Invest’s Know-Your-Customer (KYC) data for five years after account closure.
Circle sheds subsidiary amid focus on stablecoin
Voyager’s purchase of Circle Invest was announced in February.
The news comprised the third major asset Circle has sold in 12 months — following the firm’s sale of crypto exchange, Poloniex, to investors in October 2018, and the sale of its over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk, Circle Trade, to Kraken OTC in December 2019.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, a Circle spokesperson indicated that the sales are part of Circle’s push to focus more on its stablecoin, USDC. They stated: “It’s clear that there’s more interest than ever before in stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, in part because significant global technology companies like Facebook and major economies like China have advanced plans for creating digital currencies.”
The sales were accompanied by layoffs. Circle removed 30 positions, which accounted for 10% of its workforce, in May 2019, before culling a further 10 positions in December 2019.