Payment Company Stripe Enables Crypto Payouts in USDC

Payments company Stripe is now enabling crypto payments in USD Coin (USDC), and Twitter creators will be the first to use the service.

The process for fans and customers to pay creators, freelancers, sellers and “solopreneurs” can be difficult, especially outside of major markets, Stripe Product Manager Karan Sharma said in a Friday blog post.

“While the ‘store of value’ aspects of cryptocurrencies typically receive the most attention, we view the prospect of ‘open-access global financial rails’ as being at least equally compelling,” Sharma wrote.

The crypto payouts will be added to Connect, the payouts platform Stripe created in 2015. Businesses currently use Connect to programmatically send payouts to roughly 70 countries in local currencies. 

A select group of creators on Twitter, Stripe’s first partner, will be able to use crypto-based rails to receive earnings from the social media platform. Twitter already uses Connect to pay creators though its Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows products.

Payouts will first be supported in the USDC stablecoin via the Polygon PoS (MATIC) network, according to the company. Creator earnings will be paid into Polygon-compatible wallets such as Metamask, Coinbase Wallet or Rainbow Wallet, and creators can hold their earnings as USDC or convert them into a local currency.

Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle — the firm behind USDC — said in Twitter posts that the promise of digital currencies such as USDC has enabled anyone to easily receive payments anywhere in the world.

“Having one of the most important payments companies in the world adopting USDC is an indicator of things to come,” Allaire tweeted. “We share their mission to grow the GDP of the internet, and believe USDC is going to become a key building block for internet commerce.”

Sharma said that Stripe plans to add additional rails and payout currencies over time and seeks to support crypto payouts in more than 120 countries by the end of the year.

Stripe announced partnerships last month with FTX and Blockchain.com to offer support for exchanges, on-ramps, wallets and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces.

Stripe became the first major payments company to support bitcoin payments in 2014, but ended its support of the cryptoasset in 2018. “Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange,” Stripe wrote at the time.

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