Fintech giant Stripe continues to re-enter the cryptocurrency market. On Thursday, the company announced that it would allow customers to accept cryptocurrency payments, starting with just one currency in particular, USDC stablecoins, initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon. This will be the first time Stripe has accepted crypto payments since 2018, when it dropped support for Bitcoin due to it being too unstable.
In 2022, Stripe attempted its first re-entry into the crypto market by announcing payments (but not payments) in USDC, with Twitter as the service’s flagship client. Thursday’s news is not associated with any client names.
Stripe co-founder and president John Collison is expected to announce the news at the company’s Connect developer conference this week in San Francisco.
“Transaction settlements are no longer comparable in terms of duration to those in Christopher Nolan films,” he said earlier Thursday. “And the transaction costs are no longer comparable to Christopher Nolan films in terms of budget. Stripe is bringing back crypto payments – this time with stablecoins, which are a much better experience.
On Wednesday, the company revealed a long list of other launches, with the biggest update being that Stripe, for the first time ever, would allow customers to integrate competing payment providers with Stripe’s other financial services tools . Thursday’s nod to expanding crypto support is also part of this broader strategy to open up its walled garden.
A brief timeline of Stripe’s dance with crypto highlights the delicate line Stripe has walked over the years when it comes to cryptocurrency. True to its disruptive roots as a fintech, the company wanted to be at the heart of the conversation about how blockchain-based technologies will affect financial services. But it runs the risk of upending its larger business and positioning itself as a stable, reasonable financial power if it becomes too deeply or too long involved in periods of instability. The company processed $1 trillion in transactions last year, and its revenue continues to grow; its value is currently $65 billion on paper.
In 2014, Stripe launched its first efforts in the cryptocurrency space with tests on Bitcoin, the first major cryptocurrency. “Stripe’s support is crucial here because of the nature of Bitcoin: it doesn’t have all the qualities normally expected of money,” one of its early testing partners said at the time.
In 2018, he ended all these activities, considering them too volatile and unstable. “Over the past two years, as block size limits have been reached, Bitcoin has evolved to become better suited to being an asset rather than a medium of exchange,” the company said in its announcement. “This made Bitcoin less useful for payments.”
Cue June 2019 and Facebook is getting hot on crypto. Stripe became one of the founding members of Libra.
But not for long! In October 2019, Stripe, along with others, dropped their support for Facebook’s efforts. “Stripe supports projects to make online commerce more accessible to people around the world. Libra has this potential,” it was said at the time. “We will closely monitor its progress and remain open to further collaboration with the Libra Association.”
It took three more years for the company to try crypto again, turning to Twitter and stablecoin (USDC) payments with Twitter.
Given this longer-term view, it’s anyone’s guess whether Stripe will stay the course with this latest launch and what kind of timeline its efforts will take. From what we understand, however, it is already evaluating other stablecoins and platforms and sees an opportunity, at least for now.
techcrunch
