Real-world finance is moving onchain: payments, FX, credit, tokenized assets. Arc is the Layer-1 built for exactly that, and we want you to build on it.
Crecimiento and Circle are launching the Circle Acceleration Season: a six-week online program for Latam fintech and AI startups ready to build on Arc, the stablecoin-native blockchain developed by Circle, and take a live integration all the way to production.
We're selecting a focused cohort to build on Arc as the network reaches mainnet, shaping their products on the infrastructure where real-world financial flows will run.
Applications close September 22nd.
Apply to the Circle Acceleration Season
What is the Circle Acceleration Season?
A structured, hands-on program designed to take your startup from a first Arc integration to a product running in production, in six weeks.
It's a builder program where you ship a live integration on Arc, get direct support from the Circle team, and pitch on Demo Day in front of investors and ecosystem leaders. What goes on stage at Demo Day is running in production, not a demo environment.
The program follows a three-phase arc: Build, Ship, Show, opening with an onboarding week.
- Onboarding (Week 1): Get oriented on Arc and the Circle stack, meet the Circle team, and lock the integration you're going to ship. You'll have direct access to Circle's technical team through office hours from day one.
- Build (Weeks 2–3): Heads-down building with weekly office hours and technical pairing, working with App Kits, Gateway and StableFX toward a functioning prototype on testnet.
- Ship (Weeks 4–5): Take the prototype into production. Deploy on Arc mainnet, then harden it: performance, cost, edge cases.
- Show (Week 6): Refine your pitch, polish your demo, and deliver at the online Demo Day. This is where you prove what you shipped, and what comes next.
About Circle
Circle is a global financial technology firm that lets businesses use digital currencies and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide.
It issues USDC and EURC, two fully reserved stablecoins backed by cash and short-dated US Treasuries, and operates the Circle Payments Network, which connects financial institutions for cross-border settlement.
Its Layer 1, Arc, is designed for stablecoin payments and onchain finance. Circle works across more than 185 countries and holds 55 licenses.
What is Arc?
Arc is an open Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built for real-world finance, developed by Circle, the company behind USDC. Fees are low, predictable and denominated in USDC, so you're never exposed to volatile gas tokens. Transactions reach deterministic finality in under a second. And privacy is opt-in: businesses can shield sensitive transaction details while preserving the auditability that regulators require.
Circle's developer stack is the tooling available on it: App Kits, Gateway, StableFX, Agent Stack and Nanopayments. It's built for the cases where real value moves at scale: cross-border payments, onchain FX, treasury management, lending, tokenized assets, and the emerging economy of AI agents transacting autonomously.
Arc is in public testnet with mainnet on the way, which means the teams in this cohort build as the network goes live, and grow with it.
What you get
Direct support from Circle. Technical support (office hours, deep dives and pairing sessions with the Circle team) and business development guidance across the Arc and Circle ecosystem.
Curated mentorship. A weekly rhythm that keeps every team moving: group mentoring on Mondays, a masterclass matched to the week's focus on Tuesdays, office hours with the Circle team on Wednesdays, and 1:1 mentoring sessions on Thursdays, booked directly with the mentors each team needs.
A clear path forward. Top-performing teams will be flagged for post-program follow-on support within the Arc ecosystem.
Who's behind this
Crecimiento is the movement driving Argentina's tech ecosystem to position the country as a global hub for innovation.
Our Acceleration Seasons are built on a simple belief: builders need real conditions to ship, a live product to integrate, the team behind it within reach, mentors who challenge the business, and a stage with investors at the end. Six weeks, one working product, one Demo Day.
It's part of a builder funnel that runs from the Aleph Hackathon through the Acceleration Seasons and into the Startup World Cup.
Who should apply?
You're a good fit if:
- You're a pre-seed to seed fintech or AI startup from Latam.
- Your product is already in market or in closed beta.
- You have at least one technical co-founder on the team.
- You're committed to scoping and implementing the Circle tooling that is live on Arc.
- You're ready to ship. This program moves fast: the goal is a live integration on Arc mainnet in six weeks.
Key dates
- Applications close: September 22nd, 2026
- Selected teams announced: September 24th, 2026
- Program starts: September 28th, 2026
- Demo Day (online): First week of November, 2026