After dropping support for Bitcoin payments in 2018, Stripe announced yesterday that it would start accepting the USDC stablecoin at checkout on the Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon blockchains. Co-founder and President John Collison demonstrated the offering yesterday.
Collison said Stripe dropped Bitcoin support because of the slow speed of settlement. Rolling forward six years, and payments on certain blockchains such as Polygon and Solana are quicker to settle and the costs are insignificant. That said, Stripe will take its cut of 1%.
Yesterday’s announcement is a broader offering compared to some of Stripe’s crypto announcements in 2022. Then, it targeted web3 businesses to provide crypto on and off ramps. Additionally, it launched a solution for Twitter creators where some could receive USDC payouts on Polygon.
Meanwhile, Visa launched support for web3 merchants that wanted to receive settlements using the USDC stablecoin last year.
But it is PayPal that has embraced crypto the most. Its merchants have been able to accept cryptocurrencies since 2021, with the payments firm launching its own stablecoin last year, PYUSD. Currently the balance is just over $300 million, with more than a third held in the Paxos Treasury wallet, PayPal’s crypto partner.
