NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Centre, the consortium founded by Circle and Coinbase to provide standards and governance for USD Coin (USDC) and other future fiat-backed stablecoins, today announced that Morgan McKenney, former Chief Operating Officer for Citi’s Global Consumer Banking has joined the company as Special Advisor to lead Centre’s payments innovation initiatives. USDC is now the world’s fastest-growing digital dollar currency and is firmly established as the backbone of crypto trading and decentralized finance. Leveraging stablecoins for payments across and within a range of ecosystems will reduce frictions and increase accessibility to the fast growing digital economy.
McKenney joins Centre after holding a range of senior executive operating roles at Citi around the world over the last nearly 20 years, where she focused on innovating for institutional and consumer clients. Under her leadership, the Global Consumer Bank further accelerated its global digital strategy, deepened its best-in-class analytics and delivered key strategic products critical to consumers.
“USDC and stablecoins at large present immense potential to improve the way businesses, governments and individuals conduct financial transactions,” said David Puth, CEO of Centre. “Morgan’s comprehensive experience in delivering payments innovation globally will serve as a vital contribution in our work to expand the secure, trusted and compliant use and availability of USDC transactions and additional Centre-standard stablecoins in the future.”
In her new role at Centre, McKenney will help enable the use of USDC as a means to power the next generation digital economy and to lead the rearchitecting of financial services to democratize access and support economic growth. She will also bring to Centre a proven commitment to sustainable leadership to help advance Centre’s mission of creating an open and interoperable financial network for all, supporting Centre’s role as a governance organization maintaining trust in the integrity of stablecoins.
“The emerging global digital economy – including decentralized finance, content creation and digital micro-entrepreneurs, needs a trusted, native born digital currency to thrive. The true digitization of money in the form of USDC and other Centre-standard stablecoins will enable frictionless, interoperable, real time payments, democratizing access and enabling financial empowerment for consumers and businesses.” said McKenney. “I’m excited to join the Centre team and partner with a range of ecosystem players globally to bring these benefits to users.”
Previously, McKenney was based in Hong Kong, leading Citi’s core cash management business for Asia, focused on payments innovation for digital native, corporates, financial institutions and governments to power real time commerce, and also managed Citi’s Innovation Lab in Singapore. Prior to this role, she led Citi’s cross border payments business globally, based in London. Innovation accomplishments in these business roles include successfully implementing two disruptive blockchain projects, with Nasdaq and with a large Asian tech disruptor. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Leadership Now Project.
About Centre
Centre, founded by Circle and Coinbase, is the first stablecoin standards organization, providing a regulatory and operational framework for fiat-backed stablecoin issuance. Centre’s stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), has become the fastest-growing, most trusted stablecoin on the market. Centre’s governance of USDC has created a reliable, replicable framework for stablecoin issuance based on the principles of transparency and integrity. USDC in circulation is greater than $33 billion and has supported over $1 trillion on-chain transactions.
