According to TechCrunch, financial technology giant Stripe is gradually returning to the cryptocurrency market. The company announced on Thursday that it will allow customers to accept cryptocurrency payments, first supporting the USDC stablecoin, initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon. This is the first time Stripe has accepted cryptocurrency payments since it stopped supporting Bitcoin in 2018 because it was too unstable. In 2022, Stripe made its first attempt to return to the cryptocurrency market, announcing that it would make payments in USDC (but not accept payments), and Twitter was an important customer of the service. Stripe co-founder and president John Collison will announce the news at the company's Connect developer conference in San Francisco this week. On Wednesday, the company announced a long list of other new products, the most important update being that Stripe will allow customers to integrate competing payment providers with Stripe's other financial services tools for the first time. Thursday's nod to expanding cryptocurrency support is also part of a larger strategy to open up its closed garden.