Yesterday online payments company Stripe launched services for crypto businesses, including exchanges, wallets, and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces.
Stripe’s new crypto tools and application programming interfaces (APIs) enable businesses to accept fiat deposits for crypto and payout to users in local fiat currencies. The company also offers know your customer (KYC) solutions and other fraud prevention tools to crypto firms.
“Stripe now supports crypto businesses: exchanges, on-ramps, wallets, and NFT marketplaces. Not just pay-ins but payouts, KYC and identity verification, fraud prevention, and lots more,” said co-founder and President of Stripe, John Collison on Twitter.
In 2018 Stripe disabled support for Bitcoin payments because of high transaction fees and volatility. Last year the company formed a crypto team and added Matt Huang, co-founder of Web3 investment firm Paradigm, to its board of directors. This signaled the company’s intention to begin offering crypto payment services again. With crypto transaction volume rising substantially each year, Stripe does not want to miss out on the opportunity for growth. As an idea of scale, in the last three months of 2021, Visa processed $2.5 billion in crypto-related transactions.
Crypto exchange FTX has partnered with Stripe. FTX will use Stripe’s new crypto payment services as well as its onboarding and identity verification KYC tools.
Meanwhile, payments firm Square recently rebranded to Block, just two days after its CEO Jack Dorsey announced he was stepping down as Twitter CEO. And Paypal-backed Paxos was approved for blockchain payments in Singapore.
