After suspending Bitcoin for six years and suspending support for cryptocurrency payment services entirely, payment processing giant Stripe has reintroduced crypto payments for U.S. businesses, allowing merchants to receive and pay the stablecoin USDC via Ethereum, Solana and Polygon.
Stripe’s History of Cryptocurrency
Stripe first got involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2014 and stopped supporting it in January 2018. Bitcoin plummeted from US$19,650 in December 2017 to US$3,401 at the end of 2018.
At the time, product manager Tom Karlo believed that Bitcoin was too volatile and often led to trading errors, acting more like an asset than a medium of exchange, and criticized Bitcoin’s lengthy transaction times and rising fees.
Stripe also partnered with FTX in 2022 to indirectly support cryptocurrency, and in April of that year provided USDC transfer services for specific Twitter (now X) creators.
Initially only USDC and USDP are supported
Pay with Crypto, launched by Stripe, allows customers to send and receive payments using stablecoins and settle in fiat currencies in their Stripe balance. Customers can accept USDC payments on Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon without having to hold or convert the cryptocurrency to fiat themselves. Stripe will charge 1.5% of the transaction amount as a handling fee.
Enterprises headquartered in the United States can implement it through Stripe's Payment Element, Checkout function or directly through the Payment Intents API. The currently supported cryptocurrencies are USDC on Ethereum, Solana and Polygon, and USDP on Ethereum and Solana. . The transaction limit is US$10,000 per transaction and US$100,000 per month.
Stripe also partnered with U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase in June to integrate Coinbase's Layer 2 network Base into its crypto payment products, and Coinbase will add Stripe as an option for its customers to purchase cryptocurrencies using credit cards or Apple Pay within the Coinbase wallet. One way. In addition, Coinbase customers will be able to use the stablecoin USDC to simplify fiat-to-crypto conversions and transfer funds to more than 150 countries through Stripe’s connection to the Base network.
This article Stripe returns to the crypto world, opening up US businesses to pay with USDC first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.
