Key Takeaways:
Global payments giant Stripe has announced that it is reinstating support for crypto payments, six years after discontinuing Bitcoin (BTC) payments on its platform. The company had promised back in April it would add crypto as a payment option by the end of the year.
Stripe Brings Back Crypto Payments, This Time With USDC
The San Fransisco-based payments giant has introduced a new option called ‘Pay with Crypto’, which allows businesses to accept payments in USD Coin (USDC) – a US dollar-denominated stablecoin – from customers residing in more than 150 countries.
On Wednesday, Stripe’s product lead Jeff Weinstein took to X to tweet that crypto is “officially back” and the company is rolling it out to “hundreds of thousands of US businesses” in the first phase.
In April, Weinstein said Stripe would initially support USDC payments across the Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon blockchains.
Stripe users will be able to make USDC payments of up to $100,000 per month, and single payments are limited to $10,000, with a 1.5% transaction fee. The company also intends to simplify crypto transactions by automatically converting any payments made in $USDC into fiat before it is deposited into a merchant’s Stripe account.
Pay with Crypto allows businesses to integrate stablecoin payments through Stripe Checkout, Elements, or the Payments Intents API. Weinstein said the feature will soon be available to pay for subscriptions.
Earlier this year, Stripe also integrated Avalanche (AVAX) into its protocol, enabling users to access niche crypto products and NFT platforms that run on the blockchain.
Stripe Dropped Crypto Support In 2018, Citing Market Volatility And Slow Transactions Speeds As Reasons
Strip first began accepting crypto for payments in 2014 with BTC. However, the feature was dropped by the company in 2018, citing concerns over market volatility, slow transaction speeds, and high fees.
However, the event that made the company make a u-turn is its main rival PayPal announcing in 2021 that they will be offering crypto payment rails to support transactions, following an expansion of its services to the sector. PayPal’s “Checkout with Crypto” feature allows customers to make purchases at millions of merchants around the world with various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
Stripe began re-exploring crypto payments back in 2022 with services that facilitated fiat-to-crypto conversions, NFT exchanges, and crypto trading. The service instilled KYC and fraud protection to protect users from using unsafe third-party platforms. Stripe was also handling payouts from crypto exchanges and brokerages.
With the ‘Pay with Crypto’ feature, merchants will be able to add a crypto payment option as an alternative to regular card payments. Stripe believes the addition of a crypto payment option may expand the usage of the platform as a mainstream onboarding tool for Web3 projects.
Stripe Users In Over 70 Countries Paid In USDC Within 24-hours of Launch
In the first 24 hours of launching the feature, customers from more than 70 countries paid for merchant services on Stripe using USDC. Users can head to the Stripe dashboard and turn on ‘Pay with Crypto’ to enable the payment method.
As of 2024, 2.8 million online merchants use Stripe, and over 100 companies have turnovers of above $1 billion coming through the platform. Last year, the platform surpassed $1 trillion in transactions, hitting the milestone about 10 years earlier than its rival PayPal.
Daniel Seely, a senior associate and cryptocurrency specialist at law firm Freeths, called Stripe’s renewed support for crypto a “massive step forward” in the case for mass adoption of the digital asset class. He noted that having a well-established industry giant like Stripe will help the industry’s reputation in the business world as being a “serious proposition and payments tool”.
Tim Grant, CEO of Deus X Capital, commended the company for selecting USDC for crypto payments, calling the step “quite meaningful” as it allows millions of crypto holders to make payments over the Stripe network.
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