Global Payments Firm, Stripe, Bringing Stablecoin Payments, Adding Crypto Transactions that Settle to Fiat ‘Immediately’

Global payments company, Stripe, will begin supporting transactions in USD Coin (USDC), the company announced during its Global Internet Economy Conference.

Speaking at the final keynote titled ‘the Future of Payments,’ Stripe’s President, John Collison, said:

“Our history with crypto goes back a long time.” He cited the company’s now-defunct bitcoin support back in 2018 because it wasn’t being used.

According to Collison, crypto now has more use cases.

“Crypto is finding real utility,” Collison said.

“With transaction speeds increasing and costs coming down, we’re seeing crypto finally making sense as a means of exchange.”

According to the company, stablecoin payments will be integrated into the service’s checkout suite in several weeks, adding that crypto transactions will ‘immediately’ settle to fiat.

“We’re excited about empowering Stripe users to accept stablecoin payments, helping them expand their global reach and give their customers access to easy, fast, and trustworthy transactions even if they don’t have a bank account or credit card,” John Egan, Head of Crypto at Stripe, said in a press release.

Back in 2014, Stripe became one of the first major companies to accept Bitcoin payments. However, in 2018, the company decided to sunset Bitcoin payments, citing several factors, including bitcoin’s volatile price fluctuations, as a factor that rendered the token more appropriate as an ‘asset’ rather than a reliable ‘medium of exchange.’

“Over the past year or two, as block size limits have been reached, Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange,” the company said at the time.

“Despite this, we remain very optimistic about cryptocurrencies overall. There are a lot of efforts that we view as promising and that we can certainly imagine enabling support for in the future,” Stripe added.

In 2020, Stripe acquired Nigerian payment startup, PayStack.

PayStack is one of the most recognized payment processing startups on the African continent. Stripe acquired the startup in order to accelerate online commerce on the continent and enable more global companies to enter this fast-growing market.