Stripe Snaps 6-Year Crypto Break, Announces USDC Stablecoin Support In Summer

Payments titan Stripe is back in the cryptocurrency game as the company announced Thursday that it will start supporting stablecoin payments via the U.S. dollar-pegged USD Coin (USDC).

John Collison, co-founder of the fintech payments processing behemoth, revealed the development in a demo of the upcoming feature at the Stripe Sessions 2024 event Thursday. The Dublin-based company will soon facilitate transactions for companies using its technology to pay with the USDC stablecoin in a process that lasts only several seconds.

"That is the old crypto," Collison said in reference to crypto-related payments that take minutes to be processed. "Are you ready for the new crypto?" he asked the audience who responded with cheers and applause once he showed them how fast Stripe will process USDC payments.

Initially, Stripe will support USDC transactions on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon, but a "final, more expansive list will be announced close to launch."

"Crypto is back. Stripe will start supporting global stablecoin payments this summer. Transactions instantly settle on-chain and automatically convert to fiat," Collison wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Crypto enthusiasts and prominent figures in the emerging industry immediately took to the comments section to congratulate Stripe for its return to the crypto space. The official X handle of the Solana blockchain network was first in line, followed by Solana Labs head of communications Austin Federa.

There were many who recommended that Stripe should explore support for layer-2 solutions as well, such as Arbitrum and Optimism. One commenter noted that the "average user will most likely not be using L1 for day to day transactions."

Dan McArdle, co-founder of crypto research firm Messari, said he hopes Stripe will "stick with it this time." He was referring to the payment giant's move of terminating support for Bitcoin payments in 2018 wherein it cited skyrocketing fees and Bitcoin price "fluctuations." The said move led to Stripe's six-year break from supporting crypto payments.

Stripe's relationship with cryptocurrencies has been one of push-and-pull. It first dabbled into the crypto market way back 2014 with tests on BTC, which has now become the world's largest digital asset by market value. However, the company said in January 2018 that it was glad to see the digital currency's evolution as an asset, but its direction at the time "has led to Bitcoin becoming less useful for payments."

By 2022, the company said it discovered that its optimism for the crypto future "was not unfounded." At the time, Stripe noted that it was working "to give crypto businesses access to today's global financial infrastructure."