Payment giant Stripe has gradually faded out of the cryptocurrency market since it stopped supporting Bitcoin payments in 2018. After six years of silence, Stripe returned to the cryptocurrency field this year.
The company first announced at the end of April that it would allow customers to accept cryptocurrency payments again, which shocked the industry. On October 10, it officially announced support for stablecoin USDC payments, allowing users in more than 150 countries to make payments through public chains such as Ethereum, Solana and Polygon.
The largest acquisition in the history of the crypto industry
Against this backdrop, Michael Arrington, founder of the renowned technology media TechCrunch, tweeted early this morning (21st) that Stripe has acquired the stablecoin platform Bridge for US$1.1 billion. This is not only Stripe’s largest acquisition to date, but also the largest acquisition in the history of the cryptocurrency industry.
It is understood that Bridge was founded by entrepreneurs Sean Yu and Zach Abrams. The company mainly provides software tools for companies to accept stablecoin payments. Zach Abrams was a senior employee of the exchange Coinbase.
According to Forbes, Bridge had raised $58 million in investment funds, including $40 million in Series A financing, at a company valuation of $200 million. Therefore, the $1.1 billion acquisition price is a significant increase over the previous valuation.
Cooperate with Coinbase to integrate crypto payments
On the other hand, according to previous reports by Dynamic Zone, Stripe announced a partnership with the exchange Coinbase at the end of June to bring more convenient and faster payment services to millions of businesses and users around the world.
According to the statement, Coinbase said the collaboration involves three key aspects, aiming to increase on-chain adoption and provide faster and cheaper financial infrastructure:
Stripe added USDC on the Base chain to its crypto payments product to enable faster and cheaper transfers on the Stripe platform to over 150 countries.
Additionally, USDC on the Base chain has also been added to Stripe’s fiat-to-crypto onramp, enabling U.S. customers to convert fiat to crypto faster than ever before.
At the same time, Coinbase also added Stripe's fiat currency purchase cryptocurrency portal to its wallet so that people can buy cryptocurrencies instantly using credit cards and Apple Pay.
Stripe said that by adding support for Base Chain, Stripe's vast global user network will be able to access faster and cheaper transfers.
