TL;DR
- Stripe reintegrates crypto services after six years of inactivity, starting with USDC across multiple blockchains.
- The company aims to provide flexibility in payment methods and more openness to other providers.
- John Collison, its co-founder, highlighted the stability of stablecoins as a criterion for rejoining the crypto market.
Stripe, the fintech giant, has announced its decision to rejoin the crypto market after a six-year period without offering related services. The company has communicated that it will once again allow its customers to accept cryptocurrency payments, starting with the USDC stablecoin on various blockchains, including Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, according to a report by TechCrunch.
The decision is part of Stripe’s strategy to expand its services and open its platform to integration with other payment providers. The company has been working to revamp itself and provide its customers with more flexibility and options in terms of payment methods.
Crypto is back. @Stripe will start supporting global stablecoin payments this summer. Transactions instantly settle on-chain and automatically convert to fiat. Join the waitlist https://t.co/hws2OsU3Id and watch the demo (h/t @Solana) from Sessions. pic.twitter.com/zGKYW2FM6i
— John Collison (@collision) April 25, 2024
John Collison, co-founder and president of the company, announced the news during the Connect developer conference in San Francisco. Collison conveyed the company’s decision to use stablecoins due to their greater stability and improved user experience.
Stripe’s history with cryptocurrencies has had its ups and downs. In 2014, the company ventured into the crypto industry with tests involving Bitcoin. However, in 2018, they decided to suspend their support for BTC due to its volatility and lack of suitability as a medium of exchange.
Nevertheless, the firm remained active in the crypto space. In 2019, it joined the Libra project led by Facebook, although it later withdrew its support, citing its interest in participating in projects that promote accessible e-commerce but expressing willingness to collaborate with the Libra Association in the future.
Stripe’s Rollercoaster Ride in the Crypto Industry
After a three-year period out of the industry, Stripe cautiously allowed payments with stablecoins for Twitter users, marking its return to the crypto world. The success of this initiative seems to have encouraged the company to explore more possibilities for integrating digital assets.
In addition to Stripe, other payment companies are also adopting stablecoins as a payment method. Triple-A, based in Singapore, announced the integration of PayPal’s stablecoin, PYUSD, into its list of supported tokens for customer payments. As the first licensed crypto payment firm in Singapore, Triple-A aims to introduce support for PYUSD by the end of June.
While USDT remains the dominant stablecoin in the market, with approximately $110 billion in circulation, PYUSD has a much more limited circulation, with a circulating supply of just over $200 million.
Stripe’s return suggests renewed confidence in the widespread adoption of digital assets in the world of online payments, promising an increasingly optimistic future for the integration of cryptocurrencies into the global economy.
