US-based FinTech Circle has announced plans to become a national commercial bank.

The peer-to-peer payments technology company, which launched digital stablecoin for the US dollar ‘USD Coin’ three years ago, revealed that it had filed an S-4 with the SEC as part of its plan to go public.

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and chief executive of Circle, explained that in the business’ founding documents it had outlined plans to create a “global digital currency bank” that combines fiat reserve currencies with “open, permissionless blockchains.”

Allaire said that over the past eight years, since the company was first established, the capabilities of digital currency and blockchain infrastructure had evolved significantly.

“Now, with USDC at more than $27.5 billion in circulation, and building on our long-standing commitment to trust, transparency and accountability in the dollar-denominated reserves backing USDC, we are setting out to become a U.S. Federally-chartered national commercial bank,” said the chief exec in a company blog. “Circle intends to become a full-reserve national commercial bank, operating under the supervision and risk management requirements of the Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury, OCC, and the FDIC.”

He added: “We believe that full-reserve banking, built on digital currency technology, can lead to not just a radically more efficient, but also a safer, more resilient financial system.”

In July Circle revealed plans to go public in a merger deal that would value the company at $4.5 billion.

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