Circle has launched a new on-chain utility that allows users to pay for gas using USDC at Arbitrum and bases. Developers can use Paymaster to streamline gas payments within their applications. Paymaster charges 10% of your gas bill, but it’s free until June 30, 2025.
Circle has announced the launch of a new permissionless service called Paymaster. This allows users to pay USDC transaction fees to Arbitrum and Base Networks applications.
Paymaster allows developers to integrate its functionality into their applications to provide a smooth process for users.
Introducing Circle Paymaster, allowing users to pay for gas with USDC on @arbitrum and @base.
No more juggling tokens across the blockchain. Use USDC for payments, transfers, and gas fees.
Details: https://t.co/qharlehajc pic.twitter.com/o3mkwlvyjr
– circle (@circle) January 23, 2025
How Paymaster works
According to Circle’s BlogPost, Paymaster maintains a balance in the native coin used for Gas (currently ETH on Arbitrum and Base), accepts USDC payments, and pays using native Gascoin on the backend.
The application will then rebalance the native Gascoigne reserve.
Service availability is currently limited to accounts managed by smart contracts, but Circle plans to expand to externally owned accounts (private key owned accounts) after the Ethereum Pectra upgrade.
Circle also plans to expand Paymaster to Ethereum Main Net, Polygon, and Solana Networks. This allows users to pay transaction fees on multiple blockchains from a single blockchain.
