Fintech giant Stripe continues to inch its way back into the crypto market. The company announced Thursday that it will begin accepting cryptocurrency payments, initially only in Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, with customers starting with one currency in particular, the USDC stablecoin. This is the first time Stripe has used cryptocurrency payments since 2018, when it stopped supporting Bitcoin because it was too volatile.
Stripe made its first re-entry into the cryptocurrency market in 2022 by announcing payments (not payments) in USDC, with Twitter as the service's primary customer. Thursday's news did not name the customer.
Stripe co-founder and president John Collison is scheduled to announce the news at the company's Connect developer conference in San Francisco this week.
“The transaction settlement is no longer comparable in length to a Christopher Nolan movie,” he said earlier Thursday. “And transaction costs can no longer compare to the budget of a Christopher Nolan movie. Stripe brings back cryptocurrency payments, but this time using stablecoins to deliver a better experience .”
On Wednesday, the company announced a long list of other releases, but the most important update was that for the first time Stripe will allow customers to integrate competing payment providers with Stripe's other financial services tools. Thursday's agreement to expand support for cryptocurrencies is also part of a larger strategy to open up the walled garden.
A quick timeline of Stripe's efforts with crypto highlights the difficult path Stripe has taken with crypto over the years. True to its disruptive roots as a fintech, the company wanted to be in the middle of the conversation about how blockchain-based technology will impact financial services. But by dabbling too deeply or for too long in volatile times, the company risks destroying its larger business and its position as a stable and enlightened financial powerhouse. There is. The company processed $1 trillion in transactions last year and is still growing. It is currently worth $65 billion on paper.
In 2014, Stripe began its first foray into cryptocurrencies by testing the first major cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. “Stripe's support is critical here because of the nature of Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't have all the properties you would normally expect from money,” one of the early test partners said at the time.
By 2018, it had ceased all its activities as it was considered too unstable and unstable. “Bitcoin has evolved over the past year or two to become more suitable as an asset than as a medium of exchange as block size limits have been reached,” the company said in an announcement. “This makes Bitcoin less useful for payments.”
Starting in June 2019, Facebook became obsessed with cryptocurrencies. Stripe became one of his founding members of Libra.
It's not that long! By October 2019, Stripe, along with other companies, had discontinued support for Facebook's efforts. “Stripe supports projects that aim to make online commerce more accessible to people around the world, and Libra has the potential to do just that,” it said at the time. “We will closely monitor its progress and remain open to working with the Libra Association at a later stage.”
It took another three years before the company experimented with cryptocurrencies again, turning to Twitter and Twitter stablecoin (USDC) payments.
Given such a long outlook, it's anyone's guess whether Stripe will continue this course with this latest launch and what the timeline will be for its efforts. However, from what we understand, the company is already evaluating other stablecoins and platforms and believes there is an opportunity, at least for now.