Stripe to bring back crypto payments in the next few months

This is the first crypto-centric announcement from Stripe since May of last year

April 25, 2024 01:25 pm

Stripe co-founder John Collison | Stephen McCarthy / RISE / Sportsfile/"SM5_6859″ (CC license)

Global payments company Stripe announced that it was going to start allowing crypto payments on Thursday at the company’s 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.

“We’re excited to announce that we’re bringing back crypto as a way to accept payments, but this time with a much better experience,” he announced.

Due to the fact that crypto has more use cases and, as Collison’s presentation said, “crypto’s back,” Stripe decided to bring back crypto payments.

“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.”

The feature, he added, will be available later this summer.

The company hasn’t made any crypto-centric announcements since last year.

Collison told Axios last spring that the company saw potential in crypto, though it wasn’t going to switch its strategy to focus more on the space.

Collison said at the time that, despite the fact that some of their early crypto products faced a lack of demand, the company was still interested in the role crypto could play in the future.

Just last May, Stripe debuted a fiat-to-crypto onramp.

“The embeddable onramp is helpful for Web3 companies that want to fully customize the branding and customer experience, while the Stripe-hosted option provides an even easier way for users to get started,” the company said in a press release at the time.

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Newsletter

Blockworks Daily

Upcoming Events

Permissionless III Hackathon

Salt Lake City, UT

MON - TUES, OCT. 7 - 8, 2024

Blockworks and Bankless in collaboration with buidlbox are excited to announce the second installment of the Permissionless Hackathon – taking place October 7-8 in Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ve partnered with buidlbox to bring together the brightest minds in crypto for […]

learn more

Permissionless III

Salt Lake City, UT

WED - FRI, OCTOBER 9 - 11, 2024

Permissionless is a conference for founders, application developers, and users. Come meet the next generation of people building and using crypto.

learn more

recent research

Research

Why Solana Mobile Should 100x Their Phone Production

Solana Mobile is a highly ambitious foray into the mobile consumer hardware market, seeking to open up a crypto-native distribution channel for mobile-first applications. The market for Solana Mobile devices has demonstrated a phenomenon whereby external market actors (e.g. Solana-native projects) continuously underwrite subsidies to Mobile consumers. The value of these subsidies, coming in the form of airdrops, trial programs, and exclusive NFT mints, have consistently covered the cost of the phone and generated positive returns for consumers. Given this trend in subsidies, the unit economics in the market for Mobile devices, and the initial growth rate and trajectory of sales, it should be expected that Solana mobile can clear 1M to 10M units over the coming years. As more devices circulate amongst users, Solana Mobile presents a promising venue for the emergence of killer-applications uniquely enabled by this mobile-first, crypto-native distribution channel.

by Luke Leasure