Company: CRCL
Filing Date: 2025-08-12
Form Type: S-1
Source: 0001193125-25-178989
Chunk: 186

Company: Circle Internet Group, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-08-12
Form: S-1
Chunk 186
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 anticipated revenues, and the competitive landscape. However, we do not have any plans to launch such additional products that are expected to generate material amounts of fee-based revenues at this time. We believe the market opportunity in the internet financial system is vast and that, although we face a variety of risks (see “Risk factors” for a discussion of the material risks faced by our business), we are the best positioned firm to drive, capture, and monetize it.

Industry background

Limitations of traditional financial services

The financial services industry represents one of the largest and most systemically important sectors of the global economy.

Since the advent of what is now known as traditional financial services over the past 150 years, innovators have constantly endeavored to improve upon the means by which we use and move money, enter into financial contracts, and form and use capital for economic expansion. These improvements have been largely beneficial and have contributed to global economic progress. Examples include the emergence of credit cards, digital payments, electronic markets and exchanges, digital consumer finance platforms, and many other advances that have expanded the global reach of financial services with the utilization of mobile devices and software.**

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However, many challenges persist as a result of the legacy infrastructure on which these platforms are built, existing regulatory and market structures disincentivizing fundamental innovation, and a lack of the global connectivity and interoperability required for truly internet-scale financial services. We believe that an internet-based, blockchain-enabled financial system will address and resolve the most pertinent structural issues within financial services today:

| • |     | High costs: More than $120 trillion in global business-to-business payments are processed annually, according to Visa. Much of these payments are made using legacy infrastructure, such as checks and bank wires. Businesses seeking to accept payments from customers are often charged several percentage points of the transaction’s value, which functionally represents a global economic tax amounting to trillions in value annually, much of which could be returned to productive use with the adoption of more efficient, internet-native payments infrastructure. Entire industries have been established predicated upon intermediary fees, with global payments industry revenue standing at $2.4 trillion in 2023, according to McKinsey’s 2024 Global Payments Report. |

| • |     | Significant inefficiencies: Existing global systems of payment and value exchange are riddled with the same inefficiencies as pre-internet communications—money often takes days or longer to move, particularly cross-border. Besides adding significant fees from foreign exchange and other transaction-related