Original author: Foresight News
Reprinted by: Alvis, Mars Finance
As the stablecoin market matures and competition intensifies, many companies are actively seeking to take advantage of this emerging payment tool. However, how to achieve seamless integration of stablecoin payments and smooth conversion with local fiat currencies while maintaining high efficiency and low costs remains a major challenge facing the industry. Bridge was created to solve this problem.
This week, Bridge announced that it had completed a $58 million financing round, with support from investment institutions including Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Index Ventures, Haun Ventures and 1confirmation.
In fact, Bridge has been under construction for more than two years. Both of Bridge's co-founders have deep backgrounds in Coinbase and other well-known fintech companies. CEO Zach Abrams has served as chief product officer at fintech company Brex, consumer director at Coinbase, and general manager at Square. CTO Sean Yu has worked as a senior engineer or engineering manager at Airbnb, Coinbase, Doordash, and Square.
It is worth mentioning that, according to Techcrunch, the two founders co-founded the P2P payment platform Evenly as early as 2012, which is committed to simplifying the payment process between friends to share bills and other expenses. The following year, Evenly was acquired by Square, further verifying their innovation and strength in the payment field.
Bridge — Stripe for Web3
Bridge can be seen as the Web3 version of Stripe. Through a simple and easy-to-use API interface, it helps companies easily cross the threshold of stablecoin adoption, making the transfer and receipt of stablecoins more convenient and low-cost. Whether it is integrating stablecoin payments, helping companies issue their own stablecoins, or achieving efficient cross-border fund transfers, Bridge provides a full range of support and solutions.
Bridge's Orchestration API and Issuance API bring a more convenient experience to enterprises and developers. The former helps enterprises seamlessly integrate stablecoin payments, while Bridge handles all regulatory, compliance and technical complexities; the latter allows enterprises to quickly issue their own stablecoins in minutes, accepting US dollars, euros, USDC, USDT or any other stablecoins while settling funds in the company's own stablecoins, and the reserves can be invested in US Treasury bonds to earn income.
Bridge said that using its API, funds can be transferred globally in minutes, stablecoin payments can be sent seamlessly, local fiat currencies can be converted into stablecoins, and US dollar and euro accounts can be provided to consumers and businesses around the world, allowing customers to save and spend in US dollars and euros.
Bridge processes over $5 billion in annual payments
Bridge has attracted many customers, including SpaceX. According to Fortune magazine, SpaceX uses Bridge to collect payments in different currencies in different jurisdictions and transfer them to its global treasury through stablecoins. Bridge has also established partnerships with crypto companies such as blockchain network Stellar and Bitcoin payment application Strike to provide infrastructure for their own stablecoin payment functions. In addition, Coinbase has also adopted Bridge's services to support transfers between Tether on Tron and USDC on Base. According to statistics, Bridge has processed more than $5 billion in annual payments.
@TTx0x revealed that it had talked with 25 to 30 crypto payment companies in the past few weeks and found that these companies generally use or plan to use Bridge's services.
In terms of compliance, Bridge has obtained operating licenses in many places around the world. Fortune magazine reported that Bridge currently has licenses in 48 states and a VASP license in Poland, and is applying for further licenses in New York, Europe and elsewhere. According to Conviction, in areas where Bridge is not yet compliant, they have established partnerships to cover a wider range of services, for example, working with Bitso for B2B payments in Latin America.
Looking ahead, we will keep a close eye on whether Bridge can lead the transformation of the stablecoin payment field and inject new vitality and possibilities into the flow of stablecoins and legal tender funds around the world, including Africa.
