Canonical: https://builtonarc.app/guides/usdc-vs-eurc-on-arc-for-business

# USDC vs EURC on Arc: the settlement-currency decision for a business

Updated 2026-09-02. How a business should decide between settling in USDC or EURC on Arc — cost location, customer location, liquidity depth, and reporting currency.

> Choosing between USDC and EURC for a business relationship on Arc is a currency-of-settlement decision, not a technology decision — both are Circle-issued, fully-reserved stablecoins with the same underlying mechanics, differing in reference currency and, materially, in current maturity: USDC is the dominant, deeply liquid asset on Arc, while EURC is confirmed MiCA-compliant but still comparatively early, with only a testnet presence on Arc as of 2 Sep 2026. The right choice depends on where your costs sit, where your customers sit, available liquidity, and your reporting currency — worked through below.

> **Builds on Arc:** Issues both USDC and EURC on Arc; the choice between them is a settlement-currency decision. · **Role:** Issues · **Category:** Stablecoins & Tokenized Assets → Stablecoin issuers

## Where your costs are

If your operating costs — payroll, suppliers, rent, the bulk of your cash outflows — are denominated in euros, holding and settling in EURC reduces the number of currency conversions your treasury has to execute and the FX exposure it carries between the point of receiving revenue and the point of paying costs. A US-cost-base business holding USDC has the equivalent advantage in the other direction. This is the same logic that already governs which currency a business chooses to hold working capital in today, applied to a stablecoin balance instead of a bank deposit — it isn't a new decision framework, just a new instrument to apply the existing one to.

## Where your customers are

A customer base concentrated in the eurozone may have a real preference for invoicing and paying in EURC, both for their own accounting simplicity and because it avoids exposing them to USD/EUR conversion on their side of the transaction. A globally distributed or US-concentrated customer base makes USDC the more natural default, partly because of its dominance and partly because USDC's deeper liquidity (see below) means more of the payment infrastructure your customers might already use supports it natively. This is worth deciding deliberately per customer segment rather than picking one currency company-wide if your customer base genuinely splits across both.

## Liquidity depth — the honest asymmetry as of 2 Sep 2026

This is the point where USDC and EURC are not currently equivalent choices, and it's worth stating plainly rather than treating the decision as symmetric. USDC is the dominant stablecoin in the Arc ecosystem specifically and in the broader stablecoin market generally — it's the asset Arc's own gas mechanism is denominated in, and the one with by far the deeper on-chain and provider-level liquidity. EURC, while confirmed MiCA-compliant and a real, credible instrument, has a smaller circulating supply (reported as trending in the low-to-mid hundreds of millions through Q1 2026, a small fraction of USDC's scale) and, on Arc specifically, only a testnet contract address published as of 2 Sep 2026, with no mainnet address yet. Choosing EURC today means choosing a currency with thinner liquidity and a less mature Arc-specific footprint — a real, not cosmetic, tradeoff for any use case involving meaningful transaction size. See Built on Arc's <a href="/eurc-on-arc">EURC guide</a> for its current status in full, and Built on Arc's <a href="/stablecoin-fx-on-arc">FX guide</a> for how thin liquidity translates into wider spreads on a conversion.

## Reporting currency

If your entity's functional and reporting currency is USD, holding and settling primarily in USDC minimizes translation adjustments in your financial statements — the stablecoin balance maps directly to your reporting currency without a conversion step. A euro-functional-currency entity gets the same benefit from EURC. This is a straightforward accounting consideration, but it's easy to overlook when a payments or treasury decision gets made by a product or operations team without financial reporting explicitly in the room — worth looping in finance before settling on a default currency for any recurring flow.

## A practical framework, not a universal answer

Weigh the four factors against each other rather than picking one and ignoring the rest: a EUR-cost-base, EUR-customer, EUR-reporting business has every reason to default to EURC despite the current liquidity gap, and should treat that gap as a real but manageable cost of doing business in its natural currency, not a reason to hold USD exposure it doesn't otherwise want. A business without a clear euro concentration on any of the three dimensions has little reason to choose EURC over USDC today, given the liquidity and maturity gap — and can revisit that as EURC's presence on Arc matures post-mainnet.

{{entries:category=stablecoins-tokenized-assets&sub=stablecoin-issuers}}

Built on Arc is an independent directory. Arc is a Circle product; we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Circle.



Sources:
- [Circle Is First Global Stablecoin Issuer to Comply with MiCA](https://www.circle.com/pressroom/circle-is-first-global-stablecoin-issuer-to-comply-with-mica-eus-landmark-crypto-law)
- [Arc Docs — contract addresses](https://docs.arc.io/arc/references/contract-addresses)
- [Circle Announces Founding Validator Cohort and Major Integrations for Arc](https://www.circle.com/pressroom/circle-announces-founding-validator-cohort-and-major-integrations-for-arc-ahead-of-september-16-mainnet-launch)

## Questions

**Is EURC as liquid as USDC on Arc?**

No — USDC is the dominant asset on Arc, including being the currency Arc's own gas fees are denominated in, with far deeper liquidity. EURC is confirmed MiCA-compliant but comparatively early, with only a testnet presence on Arc as of 2 Sep 2026 and a materially smaller circulating supply generally.

**Should a euro-cost-base business still consider USDC?**

It can, particularly if its customers or reporting currency skew USD — but it should weigh the resulting FX exposure and conversion cost against the benefit, rather than defaulting to USDC purely because it's the more liquid asset on Arc today.

**Does MiCA compliance make EURC the "safer" choice regulatorily?**

MiCA compliance is a confirmed, real regulatory status for EURC specific to EU electronic money token rules. It doesn't by itself resolve every jurisdiction's treatment of either stablecoin — evaluate your own applicable regulatory framework directly rather than treating MiCA compliance as a universal answer.

**Can a business use both USDC and EURC simultaneously?**

Yes — nothing prevents holding and settling in both, matched to the currency of each specific relationship. The four-factor framework here is about which to default to for a given flow, not an exclusive either/or choice for the whole business.

**When should a business revisit an EURC-avoidant decision made today?**

Once Arc mainnet launches (16 September 2026) and EURC's on-Arc liquidity and provider support have had time to develop — the current liquidity gap is a snapshot as of 2 Sep 2026, not a permanent structural feature of EURC.