Key Points
- Stripe just announced that starting this summer, it will allow merchants to receive funds in USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon networks.
- The decision comes a decade after starting support for Bitcoin payments.
Stripe, an important name in digital payments, announced the decision to start accepting crypto payments. The company will start with Circle’s stablecoin, USDC.
The company’s co-founder and President, John Collison, shared the announcement at the Connect developer conference in San Francisco.
According to Stripe, transactions instantly settle on-chain and are automatically converted to fiat.
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 Egan, Stripe’s head of crypto, stated in a press release that the company will empower users to accept stablecoin payments, a move that will help them expand the global reach and offer their customers access to easy, fast, and trustworthy transactions, even if they do not have a bank account or credit card.
First, Stripe will support USDC transactions on Ethereum, Solana and Polygon, according to a spokesperson who confirmed the news to Decrypt, adding that more digital assets will follow.
A decade ago, Stripe started accepting Bitcoin payments
Back in 2014, Stripe was one of the first major companies that started accepting Bitcoin payments. This initiative stopped in 2018 when Stripe terminated the service, citing rising costs on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Back then, the company said that it remained optimistic about the future of crypto. In 2022, they updated the note, saying that since the original publication of the post, the company has learned that their optimism for the future of crypto was not unfounded.
Stripe addressed new developments in the blockchain infrastructure and the global interest from major financial institutions, saying that crypto was going mainstream. Back then, they addressed the decision to give crypto businesses access to the global financial infrastructure.
Now, Stripe enters back into crypto payments, allowing merchants to accept USDC.
Stablecoins have a value pegged to another asset, such as the dollar or gold, and they are designed to be less volatile than Bitcoin or other digital assets that witness high volatility.
They are used by crypto traders to enter and exit positions quickly in other tokens without converting them straight into a fiat currency such as the US dollar. This is helpful, especially when access to such currencies is prohibited or restricted.
The stablecoin USDC was recently in the spotlight when, in an official announcement, Binance revealed that it had converted the entire pool of assets that are held in the emergency fund for users into USDC.