Correspondent banking is one of the most expensive and least efficient parts of global finance — a network of bilateral relationships between banks that enables cross-border payments but extracts significant cost and time in the process. Banking Circle was founded in Luxembourg in 2016 to build an alternative — a licensed bank that provides financial infrastructure to payment businesses, banks, and fintechs, enabling them to offer cross-border payment and banking services without relying on traditional correspondent banking relationships. Its platform provides virtual IBANs, multi-currency accounts, cross-border payments, and lending products to payment service providers and fintechs that need banking infrastructure without wanting to become a bank themselves. Banking Circle holds a full European banking licence from the Luxembourg financial regulator, giving it the regulatory standing to provide banking services across the EEA. The company processes hundreds of billions in payment volume annually, making it one of the most significant financial infrastructure providers in Europe that most consumers have never heard of. In the embedded finance and Banking-as-a-Service landscape, Banking Circle occupies the institutional layer — providing the actual banking infrastructure that BaaS platforms often rely on to deliver their own products.