PYMNTS-MonitorEdge-May-2024

Stripe and Coinbase Integrate Crypto Services

Stripe and Coinbase have partnered to expand the global adoption of cryptocurrency and provide faster, cheaper financial infrastructure.

This collaboration aims to serve businesses and people around the world, Coinbase said in a Thursday (June 27) blog post.

With this partnership, Stripe will add USDC on Base to its crypto payouts product, according to the post. This will enable Stripe platforms to make “faster, cheaper” money transfers to more than 150 countries.

In addition, Stripe will add USDC on Base to its fiat-to-crypto onramp, allowing customers in the U.S. to make faster fiat-to-crypto conversions, the post said.

In a third key integration that’s part of this collaboration, Coinbase will add Stripe’s fiat-to-crypto onramp to Coinbase Wallet. This integration will enable instant purchase of crypto with credit cards and Apple Pay, per the post.

“By adding support for Base, Stripe’s vast global network of users will have access to faster and cheaper money transfers,” the post said. “Base has quickly become the most used L2 due to its secure, low-cost and developer-friendly transaction infrastructure, as we continue to make strides towards our one second, sub one cent goal.”

Stripe said in April that it would bring back crypto payments this summer after stopping them in 2018.

The company enabled bitcoin payments 10 years ago but stopped in 2018, with John Collison, co-founder of Stripe, saying the experience at the time was “pretty terrible” and Stripe saying there was a lack of demand.

When announcing the return of crypto payments, Collison said that there have been a lot of technical improvements in crypto, that transaction speeds have gone up, that fees have gone down, that stablecoins are becoming “more stable” and that crypto has found “real utility.”

The adoption of crypto as a mainstream payment mechanism is top of mind for businesses and merchants across verticals, PYMNTS reported at the time of that announcement.

As for Coinbase, it was reported in May that the company is diversifying its revenue sources as digital asset trading matures.

With a decrease in price volatility in digital assets, Coinbase’s crypto exchange has experienced a decline in consumer trading volume and the firm has worked to diversify.

During the first quarter, Coinbase generated about a third of its sales from sources other than trading fees, such as revenue share on USDC stablecoin and revenue from its Base blockchain.

PYMNTS-MonitorEdge-May-2024