Stripe to Add Crypto Payments for Merchants

Stripe will add the option for merchants to accept Circle’s USDC stablecoins as payments from their customers, starting this summer, the company announced.

Stripe had enabled bitcoin payments about ten years ago, but ended the service in 2018. At the time, it said bitcoin’s fluctuating price and slow transaction time made it difficult to use for payments. Stablecoins like USDC, by contrast, are designed to maintain a steady value relative to a traditional currency.

John Collison, Stripe’s co-founder and president, demonstrated a transaction using USDC tokens on the Solana blockchain at Stripe’s annual conference in San Francisco Thursday. The transaction can instantly settle on-chain and automatically convert to government-issued currency, he said in a tweet.