Stripe to Launch Support for Global Stablecoin Payments This Summer

Stripe is bringing back crypto payments after stopping them in 2018.

John Collison, co-founder of Stripe, said in a Thursday (April 25) post on X (formerly Twitter): “Crypto is back.”

Crypto is back. @Stripe will start supporting global stablecoin payments this summer. Transactions instantly settle on-chain and automatically convert to fiat. Join the waitlist https://t.co/hws2OsU3Id and watch the demo (h/t @Solana) from Sessions. pic.twitter.com/zGKYW2FM6i

— John Collison (@collision) April 25, 2024

Collison said in the post that Stripe will start supporting global stablecoin payments this summer, that transactions will instantly settle on-chain and automatically convert to fiat, and that the company has posted a waitlist for this feature.

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

The upcoming offering will let merchants use the Stripe platform to accept stablecoins for online transactions, according to the report.

Collison said Thursday during Stripe’s annual conference 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,” per the report.

In a video included in his Thursday post on X, Collison offered a preview of the new feature, demonstrating a payment using USDC.

Stripe had been an early supporter of bitcoin payments, beginning its support in 2014, but ended that at the beginning of 2018. When ending that support, the company cited technical factors like the lengthening transaction confirmation times, a growing failure rate, transaction fees so high they commonly were as costly as bank wire transfers and the resulting decrease in demand from both Stripe clients and retail customers.

The company’s Jan. 23, 2018, blog post announcing that decision was updated Thursday to say: “This summer, businesses using Stripe to accept payments online can add the option for their customers to pay with stablecoins.”

PYMNTS Intelligence reported in October 2022 that “tech-driven consumers” are the most willing to try cryptocurrency. 

Among these consumers — who make up about 15% of the overall consumer market — about one-quarter are habitual cryptocurrency users who use it at least 10 to 20 times a month, according to “Shopping with Cryptocurrency: Tech-Driven Consumers Drive Market Acceptance,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and BitPay collaboration.