Who is building on Arc from LatAm and Asia

A list of LatAm and Asian names commonly associated with Arc's ecosystem — including SBI Group, Sumitomo, Upbit, Hecto Financial, Mercoin, dLocal, EBANX, PhotonPay, LianLian, and BTG Pactual — was checked individually against primary sources for this page. Six have a confirmed Arc connection with a specific role attached. Four do not, as of 2 September 2026, and are either omitted or flagged as unconfirmed below rather than assumed.

Confirmed: a founding validator seat

[SBI Group](/project/sbi-group) — the Japanese financial-services conglomerate is named as one of Arc's eleven founding validators in Circle's 5 August 2026 release, and separately confirmed as a participant in Circle's ARC governance-token presale. Full detail on what a validator seat entails is in Arc's founding validators, explained.

Builds on Arc: Japanese financial conglomerate; a named Arc founding validator, activating its consensus seat at mainnet. · Role: Integrates · Category: Banks & Enterprises · Founding validator · Project page

[Sumitomo Corporation](/project/sumitomo-corporation) — also named among the eleven founding validators in the same release. Sumitomo is a Japanese trading and investment conglomerate; Circle's release does not detail a product-level integration beyond the validator mark itself.

Builds on Arc: Japanese trading and investment conglomerate; a named Arc founding validator, no product integration detailed. · Role: Integrates · Category: Banks & Enterprises · Founding validator · Project page

Confirmed: named integration partner

[Upbit](/project/upbit) — the South Korean exchange is named in Circle's 5 August 2026 release among exchange and wallet-custody partners providing "seamless access to USDC on Arc." This is a named integration, not a confirmed live product as of 2 September 2026, consistent with every other name in that group.

Builds on Arc: South Korean exchange named as a launch partner providing planned USDC access on Arc. · Role: Integrates · Category: Exchanges & Trading → Exchanges · Project page

Confirmed: confirmed testnet participation

[PhotonPay](/project/photonpay) — the Hong Kong-based payments processor, which serves more than 200,000 businesses globally with card issuing, payouts, and online payment services, announced in November 2025 that it had joined Arc, reported at the time in the context of the network's testnet phase. PhotonPay became a Mastercard commercial card issuer in July 2025, separate from its Arc involvement.

Builds on Arc: Hong Kong payments processor serving 200,000+ businesses; joined Arc's testnet in November 2025. · Role: Integrates · Category: Payments & Payouts · Project page

[BTG Pactual](/project/btg-pactual) — the Brazilian investment bank was named among banks, asset managers, and insurers that joined Arc's public testnet at its 28 October 2025 launch, alongside international names like BlackRock, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs. Role: Integrates (Banks & Enterprises → Banks; no Founding validator mark — Announced/exploring only, matching the HSBC/Goldman Sachs/BNY treatment). No mainnet-specific commitment has been confirmed.

Builds on Arc: Brazilian investment bank; joined Arc's public testnet at its October 2025 launch. · Role: Integrates · Category: Banks & Enterprises → Banks · Project page

Confirmed: Arc named explicitly in a partnership announcement

[LianLian Global](/project/lianlian-global) — Circle and LianLian Global announced a memorandum of understanding on 17 December 2025 to explore next-generation cross-border payments, with the release explicitly stating an intent to "leverage Circle's layer-1 blockchain Arc to support future payment use cases" and to explore how USDC can integrate with LianLian's cross-border solutions for businesses and platforms. This is an MOU — an agreement to explore, not a shipped integration — but it is the one name on this list where Circle's own materials tie the partnership to Arc by name specifically, rather than to Circle or USDC more broadly.

Builds on Arc: Cross-border payments network; MOU with Circle names Arc for future payment use cases. · Role: Integrates · Category: Payments & Payouts · Project page

Not yet confirmed as of 2 Sep 2026

Hecto Financial — the South Korean payments company confirmed in February 2026 that it joined the Circle Payments Network (CPN) to enable stablecoin-based payments, reported across multiple outlets including PR Newswire and regional business press. CPN is a distinct Circle product from the Arc blockchain itself, and none of the coverage we found ties Hecto Financial's integration to Arc specifically. Hecto Financial's Arc connection, as distinct from its Circle Payments Network integration, is not yet confirmed as of 2 Sep 2026.

Mercoin, dLocal, and EBANX — all three are named in this directory's own seed research as plausible LatAm/Asia ecosystem names, and all three are real, established payments or fintech businesses in their respective markets. We could not find a press release, official announcement, or credible reporting tying any of the three to Arc specifically. Their Arc connection is not yet confirmed as of 2 Sep 2026, and none of the three appears with an Arc-specific claim elsewhere on this site.

Why LatAm and Asia read differently from the Africa grant cohort

The contrast with Africa's Arc-connected fintechs is instructive. That group is tied together by a single program — Circle's Developer Grants — with a consistent, if imperfectly sourced, cohort narrative running through BitKE and other outlets. The LatAm and Asia names in circulation have no equivalent unifying thread: SBI Group and Sumitomo's connection to Arc runs through the founding validator cohort, an institutional-capital-markets relationship with no retail or corridor-payments component at all. Upbit's connection runs through a named exchange-integration partnership. PhotonPay's and BTG Pactual's both run through testnet participation, confirmed independently rather than through a shared program. LianLian Global's runs through a bilateral MOU. These are five structurally different kinds of "connection to Arc," bundled together in casual ecosystem summaries as if they were the same thing, when in practice they carry very different levels of commitment and evidentiary weight — a founding validator seat, an MOU to explore, and a testnet signup are not equivalent claims, even though all three get described loosely as "building on Arc" in less careful coverage.

Why this matters more here than elsewhere

LatAm and Asia coverage of Arc's ecosystem is thinner and more fragmented than the African corridor story, where a single grant program ties a cluster of named companies together with reasonably consistent reporting. Here, the names in circulation come from several unrelated sources — validator announcements, testnet-participant lists, individual partnership press releases, and separate Circle-product integrations (like CPN) that get loosely conflated with "Arc" in secondary coverage. That's exactly the kind of conflation this directory is built to catch rather than repeat, and it's why four of the ten names commonly associated with this region don't appear here with an Arc-specific claim.

Sources: - Circle Announces Founding Validator Cohort and Major Integrations for Arc - SBI Holdings participates in Circle's ARC token presale - PhotonPay Is the Latest to Join Circle's New Arc Blockchain - Circle lança blockchain de stablecoins com participação de banco brasileiro - Circle and LianLian Global Announce Collaboration to Explore Next-Generation Cross-Border Payments - Hecto Financial Integrates with Circle Payments Network to Enable Stablecoin-Based Payments