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Circle Payments Network (CPN) requires a blockchain wallet to sign and submit USDC transfer transactions on behalf of your organization. Circle doesn’t require this wallet to be a Circle Wallet. Institutions that already custody USDC and operate keys through an in-house or third-party wallet stack can use that existing infrastructure with CPN. Originating Financial Institutions (OFIs) that hold their own USDC often choose this Bring Your Own Wallet (BYOW) approach and it’s available on all blockchains that CPN supports.

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When to bring your own wallet

Bring Your Own Wallet (BYOW) is a good fit when your organization:
  • Already operates wallet infrastructure with established key-management procedures.
  • Requires custody arrangements that are specific to your compliance or regulatory environment.
  • Manages USDC balances and blockchain interactions through an existing third-party provider.
If none of these apply, you can have Circle host the operational wallet instead. See how to Set up a Circle wallet for CPN payments.

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Your responsibilities

When you bring your own wallet, you take on operational responsibilities that Circle otherwise handles. The following table summarizes how those responsibilities are divided.
ResponsibilityBYOWCircle-hosted wallet
Key management and signingYouCircle
Blockchain support and connectivityYouCircle
Nonce handlingYouCircle
USDC balance managementYouYou
Native gas token funding (where required)YouCircle
Nonce handling requirements differ between CPN Transactions V1 and V2. V1 requires you to manage nonces directly; V2 provides unsigned transaction data that includes nonce values. See the Create Transaction V2 endpoint for details.
Your wallet implementation must satisfy the technical expectations described in Wallet provider compatibility.

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How CPN works with your wallet

Regardless of which wallet option you choose, you interact with the same CPN APIs. Payment creation, settlement, and reporting work identically; only the custody and signing layer differs. If you use Transactions V1, your wallet also manages nonce selection; V2 returns a complete unsigned payload. The interaction between CPN and your wallet follows this pattern:
  1. You call the CPN Create Transaction endpoint to prepare unsigned transaction data for a payment.
  2. CPN returns unsigned transaction data (the payload your wallet needs to sign).
  3. Your wallet infrastructure signs the transaction using its own key-management system.
  4. You submit the signed transaction back to CPN through the Submit Transaction endpoint.
  5. CPN validates the signed transaction and broadcasts it to the blockchain.
  6. CPN sends webhook notifications with transaction status updates.
CPN never accesses your private keys. It issues payment instructions that your wallet infrastructure executes by signing and submitting transactions to the appropriate blockchain.
The same CPN transaction APIs apply whether you sign with Circle or with your own keys, so migrating between a Circle-hosted wallet and BYOW does not require changes to your CPN integration logic. For a full walkthrough, see the Integrate with CPN as an OFI quickstart.