Fintech

After 6-year hiatus, Stripe to start taking crypto payments, starting with USDC stablecoin

Comment

Stripe logo displayed on a smartphone screen.
Image Credits: SOPA Images / Contributor / Getty Images

Stripe, the fintech giant, continues to inch its way back into the cryptocurrency market. On Thursday the company announced that it would let customers 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 that Stripe has taken crypto payments since 2018, when it dropped support for Bitcoin due to it being too unstable.

Stripe in 2022 tried its first reentry into the crypto market when it announced payouts (but not payments) in USDC, with Twitter as its marquee customer for the service. Thursday’s news has no customer names attached to it.

Stripe co-founder and president John Collison is due to announce the news at the company’s Connect developer conference taking place this week in San Francisco.

“Transaction settlements are no longer comparable with Christopher Nolan films for length,” he said earlier Thursday. “And transaction costs are no longer comparable with Christopher Nolan films for budget. Stripe is bringing back crypto payments — this time with stablecoins, which are a way better experience.”

On Wednesday the company unveiled a long list of other launches, the most significant update being that Stripe, for the very first time, would let customers integrate competing payment providers with Stripe’s other financial services tooling. Thursday’s nod to expanding crypto support is also part of that bigger strategy to open up its walled garden.

A brief timeline of Stripe’s dance with crypto underscores the tricky line that Stripe has walked over the years when it comes to cryptocurrency. True to its disruptive roots as a fintech, the company has wanted to be in the middle of the conversation around how blockchain-based technologies will affect financial services. But it runs the risk of subverting its bigger business and positioning as a stable and sensible financial powerhouse if it dabbles too deeply or for too long in periods of instability. The company processed $1 trillion in transactions last year, and it’s still growing; it is currently worth $65 billion on paper.

Stripe, doubling down on embedded finance, de-couples payments from the rest of its stack

In 2014, Stripe launched its first efforts into cryptocurrency with tests on Bitcoin, the first big cryptocurrency. “Stripe’s support is crucial here due to the nature of Bitcoin: It doesn’t have all the qualities normally expected of money,” said one of its earliest testing partners at the time. 

By 2018, it pulled all of that activity, saying it was too volatile and unstable. “Over the past year or two, as block size limits have been reached, Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange,” the company said in its announcement. “This has led to Bitcoin becoming less useful for payments.”

Cue June 2019 and Facebook getting hot on crypto. Stripe became one of the founding members of Libra.

But not for long! By October 2019, Stripe, along with others, dropped support for Facebook’s efforts. “Stripe is supportive of projects that aim to make online commerce more accessible for people around the world. Libra has this potential,” it said at the time. “We will follow its progress closely and remain open to working with the Libra Association at a later stage.”

It took three more years for the company to try out crypto once more, with its turn to Twitter and stablecoin (USDC) payouts with Twitter.

Given that longer look, it’s anyone’s guess whether Stripe will stay the course with this latest launch and what sort of timeline its efforts will take. From what we understand, though, it’s already evaluating other stablecoins and platforms and sees an opportunity, at least for now.

More TechCrunch

The FBI along with a coalition of international law enforcement agencies seized the notorious cybercrime forum BreachForums on Wednesday.  For years, BreachForums has been a popular English-language forum for hackers…

FBI seizes hacking forum BreachForums — again

The announcement signifies a significant shake-up in the streaming giant’s advertising approach.

Netflix to take on Google and Amazon by building its own ad server

It’s tough to say that a $100 billion business finds itself at a critical juncture, but that’s the case with Amazon Web Services, the cloud arm of Amazon, and the…

Matt Garman taking over as CEO with AWS at crossroads

Back in February, Google paused its AI-powered chatbot Gemini’s ability to generate images of people after users complained of historical inaccuracies. Told to depict “a Roman legion,” for example, Gemini would show…

Google still hasn’t fixed Gemini’s biased image generator

A feature Google demoed at its I/O confab yesterday, using its generative AI technology to scan voice calls in real time for conversational patterns associated with financial scams, has sent…

Google’s call-scanning AI could dial up censorship by default, privacy experts warn

Google’s going all in on AI — and it wants you to know it. During the company’s keynote at its I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google mentioned “AI” more than…

The top AI announcements from Google I/O

Uber is taking a shuttle product it developed for commuters in India and Egypt and converting it for an American audience. The ride-hail and delivery giant announced Wednesday at its…

Uber has a new way to solve the concert traffic problem

Here are quick hits of the biggest news from the keynote as they are announced.

Google I/O 2024: Here’s everything Google just announced

Google is preparing to launch a new system to help address the problem of malware on Android. Its new live threat detection service leverages Google Play Protect’s on-device AI to…

Google takes aim at Android malware with an AI-powered live threat detection service

Users will be able to access the AR content by first searching for a location in Google Maps.

Google Maps is getting geospatial AR content later this year

The heat pump startup unveiled its first products and revealed details about performance, pricing and availability.

Quilt heat pump sports sleek design from veterans of Apple, Tesla and Nest

The space is available from the launcher and can be locked as a second layer of authentication.

Google’s new Private Space feature is like Incognito Mode for Android

Gemini, the company’s family of generative AI models, will enhance the smart TV operating system so it can generate descriptions for movies and TV shows.

Google TV to launch AI-generated movie descriptions

When triggered, the AI-powered feature will automatically lock the device down.

Android’s new Theft Detection Lock helps deter smartphone snatch and grabs

The company said it is increasing the on-device capability of its Google Play Protect system to detect fraudulent apps trying to breach sensitive permissions.

Google adds live threat detection and screen-sharing protection to Android

This latest release, one of many announcements from the Google I/O 2024 developer conference, focuses on improved battery life and other performance improvements, like more efficient workout tracking.

Wear OS 5 hits developer preview, offering better battery life

For years, Sammy Faycurry has been hearing from his registered dietitian (RD) mom and sister about how poorly many Americans eat and their struggles with delivering nutritional counseling. Although nearly…

Dietitian startup Fay has been booming from Ozempic patients and emerges from stealth with $25M from General Catalyst, Forerunner

Apple is bringing new accessibility features to iPads and iPhones, designed to cater to a diverse range of user needs.

Apple announces new accessibility features for iPhone and iPad users

TechCrunch Disrupt, our flagship startup event held annually in San Francisco, is back on October 28-30 — and you can expect a bustling crowd of thousands of startup enthusiasts. Exciting…

Startup Blueprint: TC Disrupt 2024 Builders Stage agenda sneak peek!

Mike Krieger, one of the co-founders of Instagram and, more recently, the co-founder of personalized news app Artifact (which TechCrunch corporate parent Yahoo recently acquired), is joining Anthropic as the…

Anthropic hires Instagram co-founder as head of product

Seven orgs so far have signed on to standardize the way data is collected and shared.

Venture orgs form alliance to standardize data collection

As cloud adoption continues to surge toward the $1 trillion mark in annual spend, we’re seeing a wave of enterprise startups gaining traction with customers and investors for tools to…

Alkira connects with $100M for a solution that connects your clouds

Charging has long been the Achilles’ heel of electric vehicles. One startup thinks it has a better way for apartment dwelling EV drivers to charge overnight.

Orange Charger thinks a $750 outlet will solve EV charging for apartment dwellers

So did investors laugh them out of the room when they explained how they wanted to replace Quickbooks? Kind of.

Embedded accounting startup Layer secures $2.3M toward goal of replacing QuickBooks

While an increasing number of companies are investing in AI, many are struggling to get AI-powered projects into production — much less delivering meaningful ROI. The challenges are many. But…

Weka raises $140M as the AI boom bolsters data platforms

PayHOA, a previously bootstrapped Kentucky-based startup that offers software for self-managed homeowner associations (HOAs), is an example of how real-world problems can translate into opportunity. It just raised a $27.5…

Meet PayHOA, a profitable and once-bootstrapped SaaS startup that just landed a $27.5M Series A

Restaurant365, which offers a restaurant management suite, has raised a hot $175M from ICONIQ Growth, KKR and L Catterton.

Restaurant365 orders in $175M at $1B+ valuation to supersize its food service software stack 

Venture firm Shilling has launched a €50M fund to support growth-stage startups in its own portfolio and to invest in startups everywhere else. 

Portuguese VC firm Shilling launches €50M opportunity fund to back growth-stage startups

Chang She, previously the VP of engineering at Tubi and a Cloudera veteran, has years of experience building data tooling and infrastructure. But when She began working in the AI…

LanceDB, which counts Midjourney as a customer, is building databases for multimodal AI

Trawa simplifies energy purchasing and management for SMEs by leveraging an AI-powered platform and downstream data from customers. 

Berlin-based trawa raises €10M to use AI to make buying renewable energy easier for SMEs