After 6 years, Stripe embraces Crypto again, joining PayPal's competition in cryptocurrency payments?
On April 26, John Collison, co-founder and president of Stripe, announced during his keynote speech at the Global Internet Conference that Stripe will re-enable cryptocurrency as a payment method.Author: shushu, BlockBeats
After 6 years, traditional payment giant Stripe has once again accepted cryptocurrency payments.
On April 26, Stripe co-founder and president John Collison announced during a keynote speech at the Global Internet Conference that Stripe would re-enable cryptocurrency as a payment method. Stripe will support USDC stablecoin payments on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon. John stated, "This time we will provide a better experience," and he also demonstrated how to use USDC for payments during the conference demonstration.
In John's demonstration video, it can be seen that Stripe's current payment interface now includes a Crypto option, allowing users to pay using the Phantom wallet on the Solana chain. Stripe claims that payments made with stablecoins will be automatically converted into fiat currency and deposited into the merchant's Stripe account.
As early as 2014, Stripe became one of the first major companies to accept Bitcoin payments; however, its cryptocurrency plans ended in failure in 2018. The reason given was that Bitcoin's volatility was too high and unstable. That year, Bitcoin fell from its peak of $19,650 in December 2017 to $3,401 by the end of 2018.
In a statement at that time, Stripe said, "As the block size reached its limit, Bitcoin has evolved into an asset rather than a means of exchange. This has made Bitcoin less useful for payments."
In June 2019, Facebook entered the cryptocurrency space, and Stripe became one of the founding members of Libra. However, in October of the same year, Stripe and other companies withdrew their support for Facebook.
It wasn't until March 2022 that Stripe announced its return to the crypto space, with John Collison posting on social media that Stripe had supported cryptocurrency operations, including trading platforms, gateways, wallets, and NFT markets, not just payments, but also KYC and identity verification, fraud prevention, and more.
This was followed by a series of actions supporting cryptocurrency payments. In April, Stripe announced a trial of cryptocurrency payments on Twitter using Polygon, initially supporting USDC transfers on Polygon. In May, it partnered with Bitcoin payment infrastructure platform OpenNode to provide Stripe's merchant users with instant conversion of payments into Bitcoin. In September, Stripe announced that it had enabled USDC payment functionality for freelancers. In December, it launched a fiat-to-cryptocurrency payment product for Web3 businesses, which is a customizable widget that developers can directly embed into their DEX, NFT platforms, wallets, or DApps.
However, as the entire cryptocurrency market entered a bear market, Stripe also faced negative impacts such as layoffs and declining valuations. Nevertheless, in March 2023, Stripe completed a $6.5 billion Series I funding round at a valuation of $50 billion, with investors including a16z, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners, Thrive Capital, GIC, Goldman Sachs, and Temasek.
In 2023, Stripe's business actions in the cryptocurrency space have been limited, but during this period, another traditional payment giant, PayPal, also chose to enter the cryptocurrency field. In August of last year, PayPal announced the launch of the stablecoin PayPal USD (PYUSD), which is issued by Paxos Trust (the former issuer of BUSD), fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term government bonds, and similar cash equivalents, and will gradually be made available to PayPal's customers in the U.S.
