Stripe, the fintech giant, has announced its plans to resume accepting cryptocurrency payments after a hiatus of six years. The company will initially start with USDC stablecoins on the Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon blockchains. This decision was revealed by Stripe’s co-founder and president, John Collison, at the Connect developer conference in San Francisco. Collison highlighted the enhanced stability and user experience that stablecoins provide. The move is part of Stripe’s broader strategy to expand its services and collaborate with other payment providers, aiming to offer customers more flexibility and options. Stripe processed a remarkable $1 trillion in transactions last year and continues to grow, with a current valuation of $65 billion. In 2014, the company experimented with Bitcoin but stopped supporting it in 2018 due to its volatility and unsuitability as a means of exchange. Stripe also briefly participated in the Libra project led by Facebook but withdrew its support shortly after. After a three-year break, Stripe cautiously re-entered the cryptocurrency space by enabling stablecoin payouts for Twitter users. The company’s success in this venture has encouraged further exploration of crypto integration possibilities. In addition to Stripe, other payment companies, such as Triple-A, have also embraced stablecoins as a form of payment. Triple-A plans to integrate PayPal’s stablecoin, PYUSD, into its supported tokens for customer payments. As the first licensed crypto payments firm in Singapore, Triple-A aims to introduce support for PYUSD by the end of June. Currently, the company primarily offers payment services in Bitcoin, Ether, and stablecoins issued by Tether and Circle. Tether’s USDT remains the dominant stablecoin in the crypto market, with a circulating supply of approximately $110 billion, while PYUSD has a circulating supply of just over $200 million since its launch in August 2023.
