Circle to end support for its payment app, to shift to blockchain-based financial projects

Peer-to-peer payment network company Circle is ending support for its mobile app Circle Pay to develop new crypto financial services.

According to its blog post, Circle, which allows users to send and receive digital currencies, will shut down its fiat money sending platform beginning July 8, 2019, and app users can no longer add or send money to anyone via their Circle Pay account.

All remaining funds on the platform will be returned to clients’ bank accounts on July 31. And by September 30, the firm will cut down all of the app’s support.

The reason for sunsetting support to the app is that Circle plans to explore more on new blockchain-based financial products, which include launching new wallet services and enabling digital currency adoption via cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex.

“… 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,” Josh Hawkins, Circle spokesperson, told CoinDesk.

As previously reported, although Circle has bagged $110 million in a series round in 2018 and is backed by major industry leaders like Goldman Sachs, the company laid off 30% of its staff in late May because of “increasingly restrictive regulatory climate in the United States.”