TradFi Giant Stripe Announces Support for Crypto Payments On Solana

Stripe, a leading ecommerce payments platform, has re-enabled crypto payments for U.S. merchants after terminating the service in 2018.

The TradFi giant’s reintegration with the blockchain world indicates the growing demand for synergy between Web2 and Web3 businesses, with the shared vision of delivering a superior customer experience.

Stripe Re-instates Crypto Payments

In April 2024, Stripe product lead Jeff Weinstein announced that crypto payments would be returning to Stripe’s platform during the summer. A live demo accompanied the announcement, showing how users could pay for goods and services online using $USDC held in their Solana wallets.

Six months later, Stripe finally announced that crypto payments would be once again go live for U.S. merchants. Stripe crypto payments have already been live in the European Union since July 2024.

Currently, Stripe supports payments on three different blockchain networks, Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon. The payments platform automatically converts the provided stablecoins into cash, meaning that businesses are able to receive USD from over 150 countries.

Stripe originally enabled crypto payments via Bitcoin as far back as 2014. During a four year tenure, the program suffered from lengthy confirmation times, abrupt changes in BTC value, and high transaction fees. Stripe ultimately sunset the program in 2018.

Stablecoin Payments Bridging the Gap

By dipping its toes back into the crypto world, Stripe reinforces the trend of large scale traditional financial services exploring blockchain solutions. 

Alongside Stripe’s re-integration of crypto payments, TradFi rival PayPal has taken bold steps into the space with its $PYUSD stablecoin. PayPal USD has enjoyed impressive growth sice launching on the Solana blockchain, amassing a market capitalization of over $330M.

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, expressed enthusiasm towards Stripe’s support of the $USDC stablecoin. Stripe’s integration of Circle’s $USDC stablecoin promises to be a significant boon for the asset, enabling users in over 150 countries spend their $USDC in ecommerce platforms based in the United States.

Solana as a Payments Network

While Stripe announced that it would be enabling crypto payments across multiple networks, Solana is objectively the best suited for processing payments at scale. Compared with Ethereum and Polygon, the Solana network boasts far superior transaction throughput than rival networks.

Additionally, Solana transaction fees are dramatically lower than what users might pay on Ethereum. Given that Stripe’s earlier Bitcoin support was terminated due to high transaction fees and long settlement times, Solana’s high-performance network should facilitate the ongoing success of the program.

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