Using Circle Wallets to Send and Manage USDC

Introduction: Storing, sending, receiving

Storing, sending, receiving. When it comes to USCC, these are the core experiences your users care about, whether you're using your wallet, your platform, or your application. So how do you build that without building everything from scratch? Hi, I'm Elton, and I work on the Developer Relations team at Circle.

Stablecoin 101 and Circle Wallets overview

Welcome back to Sablecoin one hundred one, a series by Circle where we break down the foundations of Sablecoins and how they are powering the new Internet financial system. In this video, we introduce Circle Wallets, your gateway to moving programmable money at scale, and show how they let you send and manage your SEC. Whether you're building a wallet, a fintech platform, or on chain commerce, Circle Wallets give you the foundation to securely support what users care about most: storing, sending, and receiving USCC. Let's start by reviewing what these collections are.

The three core user experiences: Store, Send, Receive

Store. Your users need a secure place to hold USCC, whether that's a wallet they control or a wallet you create and manage on their behalf. There might be a visible balance in your app, a digital account inside your fintech platform, or a simple on chain address under the hood. Send.

Next, they want to send USCC, whether it's paying a peer, settling a bill, or sending funds to a contractor. Sending USCC should feel like sending an email: fast, intuitive, and reliable. Everything else moves at internet speed. Your money should too.

And finally, receiving. Your users also need to receive USCC, whether it's getting paid for a task, earning cash back, or topping up a balance. For developers, it's about reliably automating inbound flows across chains, interfaces, and user contacts. We have now defined the core components of using USCC.

But how do you build all of these capabilities without building everything from scratch? That's where Circle Wallets come in. Circle Wallets give you a set of APIs to build secure, flexible wallet experiences to meet your needs, from key management to transaction signing. Let's walk through the three wallet models Circle supports and how each one helps you deliver the right experience for your users.

Wallet models: Developer control wallets

Developer control wallets. These wallets are fully managed by your back end. You control when wallets are created, how transactions are signed, and how wallets interact with your app without users managing private keys or dealing with the blockchain directly. These wallets can be externally owned accounts or smart contract accounts and they are secured using multi party computation to protect private keys without exposing them.

This model works well for backend driven use cases like automated payouts, deposit collection, token distribution, or AI agent wallets where you need full control and predictable flows. With Circle Handling Key Management, Transaction Signing and Blockchain infrastructure, you can build scalable experiences without dealing with blockchain complexity.

Wallet models: User Control Wallets

User Control Wallets User Control Wallets are fully managed by the user. Your application handles the user interface and users authenticate using methods like email or social login.

This model works well for user ownership driven experiences like digital wallets in fintech apps, reward platforms or financial services tools where users expect control, portability and direct access to their funds.

Wallet models: Modular Wallets (smart contract wallets + modules)

Modular Wallets These wallets let you design the wallet experience, while Circle handles secure signing and backend infrastructure. These are smart contract wallets that support modules which are pre built, audited smart contracts that let you extend wallet functionality with features like passkey authentication, batch transactions and parallel execution of transactions. Passkey

wallets in particular give users full control with keys secured on their devices and backed up to their personal cloud services. Modular wallets are ideal when you want to tailor signing flows or transaction logic to your product, all built on open, composable standards co authored by Circle. With these three wallet models to choose from, it's not always clear which one fits best. So how do you decide?

How to choose the right model (use cases)

Developer controlled wallets give you full backend control. They are ideal for managed flows like payouts, deposits and automated transfers. Let's say you are building a payroll system. You want to create wallets for your users, fund them at the right time and trigger transfers automatically.

A developer controlled wallet gives you the tools to do exactly that, all without needing the end user to manage signing.

User controlled wallets put power in the hands of the user. They are great for apps where users expect control over how their funds are used but without the friction of managing private keys. Let's say you are building a consumer app that lets users review and approve recurring USCC payments like subscriptions.

With user controlled wallets, users approve transactions as they happen, while Circle handles the complexity of secure key management and recovery behind the scenes.

Modular wallets are for developers who want to build their own wallet experience. Let's say you need a wallet model that doesn't quite fit what developer controlled or user controlled wallets offer. With Modular Wallet, you can start with a minimal core and plug in modules to shape how your wallet works.

For example, you can add the passkey module to enable secure biometric signing without storing seed phrases. It's ideal if you want to customize the wallet experience for your specific use case. The good news? All of these models are powered by the same Circle Wallets platform with secure key management and support for both externally owned accounts and smart contract accounts.

In other words, you get seamless and intuitive access to all Circle Wallets through Circle's REST APIs and SDKs.

Closing: Summary and next video

So that's how Circle Wallets help you build secure and flexible experiences for storing, sending and receiving USCC across different models all powered by the same platform. In the next video, we will walk you through how to use Circle Developer Contract Wallet to send and manage USCC step by step. And if you want to learn more about how stablecoins like USCC are shaping the future of digital finance, check out the full Stablecoin one hundred one series.

The link is in the description below. See you next time.