Stripe is relaunching crypto-based payments after a six-year ban.
This decision comes amid a generally renewed interest in crypto, and the popularity of stablecoins.
The new feature will be released in the summer of 2024 and will support USDC payments on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon.
Stripe sees stablecoins as a viable store of value, especially in countries with unstable currencies.
In a major win for crypto adoption worldwide, Stripe is set to relaunch crypto-based payment on three major blockchains, after a pause since 2018.
This new development will focus on stablecoins, particularly USDC, based on factors like stability, compared to conventional crypto.
Let’s go over this new development, and why it is such a big win for the slowly maturing crypto industry.
Sometime in mid-2018, Stripe has announced an indefinite ban on Bitcoin transactions, due to issues like volatility and others.
However, a lot has changed since 2018. We now have crypto as one of the most popular investment choices among institutional and retail investors, and stablecoins have taken centre stage when it comes to stability.
Stripe noticed this, and very recently its co-founder, John Collison, while addressing the audience at the company’s developers conference in San Francisco on April 25, announced that crypto payments are coming back.
Crypto payments are coming back
The soon-to-be-launched feature is slated to be released this summer and will support payments in USDC across three major blockchains, including Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon.
Collison mentioned that the dollar peg of Stablecoins (like USDC) not only ensures stability but also makes them a viable store of value, especially in certain countries with unstable or extremely volatile currencies.
Stripe’s relationship with crypto goes as far back as 2014 when it first became the biggest payment processing company to embrace Bitcoin.
The company eventually canned Bitcoin in 2018 but has been exploring the crypto space under the radar ever since.
Some of the major crypto-related projects the company has been involved in include the Libra project alongside Facebook (now Meta) in 2019, and later reviving its crypto engineering team in 2021.
Libra eventually rebranded into “Diem” but never gained widespread, causing Stripe to withdraw from the project.
In 2022, after withdrawing from Libra, Stripe also entered a partnership with Twitter, in a project that allowed content creators to receive payments in USDC.
Moreover, Stripe also developed fiat-to-crypto exchange services through APIs and operated these services alongside major crypto exchanges like Binance and Coinbase.
Overall, this launch of USDC payments on Stripe is another step in the right direction, when it comes to establishing a crypto foothold in institutional investment.
As the Summer launch approaches, the crypto community waits to see the impact of this development on the crypto space.
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