USDC vs USDT for Card Settlement

Transparent and Audited: Issued by Circle, a regulated financial institution, with monthly attestations by Grant Thornton. This matters for enterprise compliance and institutional partnerships where auditability is non-negotiable.

Dominant Market Presence: $110B+ in circulation across 16+ blockchains. This matters for maximizing user reach and ensuring minimal slippage for large-volume card settlement operations, especially in global markets.

Native DeFi Asset: The preferred collateral in protocols like Aave, Compound, and Uniswap. This matters for building programmable settlement where funds can be seamlessly deployed into yield-generating strategies post-transaction.

Optimized for Transfers: Often has lower gas fees on networks like Tron (TRC-20) due to high adoption. This matters for high-frequency, low-value card settlements where transaction cost is a primary constraint.

Fully reserved and regulated: Issued by Circle, a licensed financial entity under NYDFS. Regular attestations by Grant Thornton provide verifiable proof of reserves. This matters for enterprise compliance and mitigating regulatory risk in card programs.

Native issuance on 15+ chains including Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Polygon. This reduces bridge risk and settlement latency. For card settlement, Solana's sub-second finality paired with native USDC offers a significant speed and cost advantage over bridged alternatives.

~$110B market cap vs USDC's ~$33B, creating deeper on-chain liquidity. This results in tighter spreads on DEXs and CEXs, crucial for large-volume card issuers managing treasury operations and minimizing slippage during fiat conversions.

De-facto standard in emerging markets and cross-border settlements. Extensive integration with OTC desks and payment processors like BTCPay Server. This matters for card programs targeting global user bases where USDT is the primary on/off-ramp.

Centralized issuer risk remains. While transparent, Circle can freeze addresses (OFAC compliance). For a permissionless settlement layer, this is a single point of failure compared to decentralized alternatives like DAI, though it's a standard expectation for regulated fiat-backed stablecoins.

Limited reserve breakdowns from Tether. While they publish attestations, the composition (commercial paper, etc.) has been historically less transparent than USDC. This creates counterparty risk that enterprise treasuries and compliance teams must underwrite.

Dominant market position: $110B+ circulating supply across 14+ blockchains. This matters for high-volume settlement where deep liquidity minimizes slippage for large treasury operations. Its presence on Tron (low-fee) and Ethereum (high-security) offers deployment flexibility.

Opaque reserves and regulatory scrutiny: Tether's reserves have faced ongoing audits and regulatory actions (e.g., $41M NYAG settlement). This matters for enterprise risk management where counterparty stability and compliance are non-negotiable for PCI-DSS or banking partnerships.

Fully reserved and regulated: Issued by Circle, a licensed money transmitter, with monthly attestations by Grant Thornton. This matters for institutional integration where legal certainty is required for card program managers (e.g., Visa's direct settlement partner) and enterprise treasuries.

Ethereum-centric deployment: ~80% of its $32B supply is on Ethereum, leading to higher gas fees for on-chain settlement. This matters for micro-transactions and high-frequency settlements where cost predictability is critical. Layer-2 adoption (Base, Arbitrum) is growing but lags behind USDT's native multi-chain footprint.