Stellar's Role in Cross-Border Payments: Active Corridors and Settlement Partners

Stellar is a blockchain network built specifically for fast, low-cost cross-border payments and asset issuance, and it functions as the settlement layer for real-world remittance corridors operated by a network of regulated partner companies, known as anchors. 

Unlike general-purpose smart contract platforms, Stellar's core design centers on a built-in decentralized exchange and a payment protocol that lets different currencies and assets move between parties through this anchor network. 

As of 2025, Stellar's Anchor Directory listed dozens of active anchors supporting more than 170 fiat currencies globally. This article looks at how that infrastructure works, which partners use it, and what role USDC plays on the network today.

What Makes Stellar Different From Other Payment Networks?

Stellar was created in 2014 by Jed McCaleb, who previously co-founded Ripple, and the network is maintained by the Stellar Development Foundation, a nonprofit organization. Stellar's consensus mechanism, called the Stellar Consensus Protocol, is based on a model known as federated Byzantine agreement, which allows transactions to settle in a few seconds at a cost of fractions of a cent per transaction.

The core building block of Stellar's payment system is the anchor. An anchor is a regulated entity, typically a licensed money services business or financial institution, that issues digital tokens representing real-world currency on the Stellar network and allows users to redeem those tokens for the underlying fiat currency. 

When someone sends money across a Stellar-based corridor, an anchor on the sending side issues a token representing the deposited currency, the token moves across the network, and an anchor on the receiving side redeems it for local currency, often through mobile money or bank payout.

Stellar's Built-In Decentralized Exchange

A distinguishing technical feature of Stellar is its native decentralized exchange, built directly into the protocol rather than added through a separate smart contract. This exchange allows assets issued by different anchors to be automatically converted through a process called path payments, where the network finds the most efficient series of trades to convert one asset into another, even across multiple currency pairs, within a single atomic transaction. This means a payment can be sent in one currency and received in a completely different currency without the sender or receiver needing to manually execute a currency exchange.

How Does The MoneyGram Partnership Work?

MoneyGram, one of the largest remittance companies in the world, partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to launch MoneyGram Access, a service that allows users to convert cash to and from USDC at MoneyGram locations using the Stellar network as the settlement layer. This integration allows someone to deposit cash in one country, have it represented as USDC on Stellar, and have a recipient withdraw cash in a different country, with Stellar handling the on-chain settlement step between deposit and payout.

This corridor is significant because it connects MoneyGram's large existing network of physical cash agent locations to blockchain-based settlement, meaning a user does not need to already hold a crypto wallet or understand blockchain technology to benefit from the underlying settlement speed. The cash-to-crypto and crypto-to-cash conversion happens at the MoneyGram counter, while Stellar handles the movement of value between the two locations in the background.

What This Corridor Demonstrates About Stellar's Architecture

The MoneyGram integration illustrates the practical mechanics of Stellar's anchor model:

• A user deposits cash at a MoneyGram location, which acts as an anchor
• That cash deposit is represented as USDC on the Stellar network
• The USDC moves across the Stellar network using the Stellar Consensus Protocol, settling in seconds
• A recipient withdraws local currency at a MoneyGram location in another country, with the receiving anchor redeeming the USDC for fiat

This flow removes the need for multiple correspondent banking relationships between the two countries, since the settlement step happens on Stellar rather than through a chain of intermediary banks.

Which Other Anchors Make Up Stellar's Network?

Beyond MoneyGram, Stellar's anchor ecosystem includes a broad range of regional financial institutions and fintechs, each serving different corridors and currencies. Some of the most strategically important anchors include the following:

• Circle Internet Financial issues USDC and EURC natively on Stellar, providing the dollar and euro-denominated stablecoin liquidity that underpins many anchor-to-anchor settlements across the network
• Tempo provides European banking rail connections, supporting fiat on and off ramps for users and businesses operating within European payment systems
• Settle Network focuses on Latin American fiat corridors, connecting local currency rails in the region to Stellar-based settlement
• Bitso, one of Latin America's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, supports major exchange and remittance corridors connecting Mexican pesos and other regional currencies to the network
• Coins.ph, a major Philippine fintech platform, supports remittance corridors connecting the Philippine peso to Stellar-based settlement, a corridor relevant to the large overseas Filipino worker remittance market

Additional Anchors Supporting Regional Corridors

A number of other anchors extend Stellar's reach into specific regional markets and use cases:

• Vibrant uses anchor integrations to provide fiat access for users within its application
• BlindPay supports fiat on and off ramp infrastructure for cross-border payment flows
• Zeam Money operates as an anchor supporting fiat conversion within its target markets
• Cowrie provides anchor services connecting African currency corridors to the Stellar network
• Anclap supports fiat on and off ramps within Latin American markets
• ClickPesa connects East African mobile money systems, including Tanzanian shilling corridors, to Stellar-based settlement
• Flutterwave, a major African payments company, has integrated with the Stellar ecosystem to extend its payment infrastructure across African markets

Circle and USDC on Stellar

Circle, the issuer of USDC, has supported USDC issuance natively on the Stellar network since 2021, and also issues EURC, a euro-denominated stablecoin, on Stellar. This gives Stellar-based applications and anchors access to widely recognized, fiat-pegged stablecoins without relying on bridged or wrapped versions of these tokens. 

USDC on Stellar functions as the primary settlement asset used in the MoneyGram Access corridor and other anchor-based remittance flows, since a dollar-denominated stablecoin provides a stable intermediate asset for converting between two different local currencies. EURC plays a similar role for corridors involving European currencies, particularly where anchors such as Tempo provide the connecting banking rails.

It is worth noting that USDC's circulating supply and trading volume on Stellar are smaller than its presence on larger chains such as Ethereum, Solana, and Base. Stellar represents one issuance venue among several for USDC, with anchor-driven remittance activity being a primary driver of USDC usage on this particular chain.

How Does Stellar's Anchor Model Compare To Other Networks?

A common point of comparison is XRP, another network historically associated with cross-border payments. The key structural difference is that Stellar's anchor model has historically relied on a broad network of regional financial institutions and fintechs, such as Bitso 

in Latin America, Coins.ph in the Philippines, and Cowrie and ClickPesa in Africa, rather than a small number of large banking partners. This distributed anchor network is one of Stellar's strongest assets for remittances, stablecoin liquidity, and tokenized real-world assets, since it allows the network to plug into many regional payment systems simultaneously rather than depending on a handful of major institutional relationships.

Conclusion

Stellar's role in cross-border payments centers on its anchor model and built-in decentralized exchange, which together allow value to move between different currencies and jurisdictions through a single settlement layer. 

As of 2025, the Stellar Anchor Directory listed dozens of active anchors supporting more than 170 fiat currencies. 

MoneyGram Access remains the most recognizable example. It connects MoneyGram's physical cash network to Stellar-based USDC settlement. The broader ecosystem goes further. 

Circle provides USDC and EURC liquidity. Tempo supports European banking rails. Settle Network covers Latin American corridors. Bitso and Coins.ph handle major exchange and remittance flows. 

Smaller regional anchors round out the network, including Cowrie, ClickPesa, Anclap, BlindPay, Zeam Money, Vibrant and Flutterwave. This is a distributed network of regional financial institutions and fintechs, not a handful of large banking partners. That structure is one of Stellar's core strengths for remittances, stablecoin liquidity, and tokenized real-world assets. 

Resources

1. Stellar Development Foundation – Stellar Network Overview and Consensus Protocol Documentation
2. Stellar Anchor Directory – Directory of Active Anchors, Supported Currencies, and Corridor Information
3. Stellar Development Foundation Anchor Platform – Technical Documentation on How Anchors Issue and Redeem Assets
4. MoneyGram – MoneyGram Access: Cash to Digital Currency Service Information
5. Circle – USDC and EURC Multi-Chain Issuance Including Stellar Network Support
6. Bitso – Bitso Exchange: Latin American Remittance and Exchange Corridor Information
7. Coins.ph – Coins.ph: Philippine Fintech Platform and Stellar Anchor Integration
8. Stellar Expert – Stellar Network Explorer: Asset Issuance and Transaction Data
9. CoinMarketCap – XLM Current Price, Market Cap, and Network Statistics