Stripe Ignites Crypto Payments: USD Stablecoin Now Live on Ethereum, Base & Polygon
Stripe just plugged the rails of traditional finance directly into the crypto economy. The payments giant flipped the switch on USD stablecoin transactions, letting merchants tap into the liquidity of Ethereum, Base, and Polygon.
Why This Move Cuts Through the Noise
Forget speculative tokens—this is about utility. By enabling dollar-pegged digital currency payments, Stripe bypasses the volatility that spooked mainstream adoption. It’s a direct pipeline from crypto wallets to real-world commerce, built on three of the most active blockchains in the game.
The Infrastructure Play No One’s Talking About
This isn't just another payment option. It’s a strategic land grab for settlement layer dominance. While Wall Street debates ETFs, Stripe is quietly building the plumbing that could make legacy cross-border systems look like fax machines. One cynical take? It’s a brilliant hedge—capturing fees on the way into crypto and now on the way out.
Watch the dominoes fall. When a fintech of this scale legitimizes stablecoin settlements, it doesn't just enable payments—it pressures every other payment processor to follow or get left with the analog money.
Easy integration for merchants
The feature has been integrated into Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite, meaning that no changes are required for merchants. Payments made with stablecoins would be converted for settlement in the merchant payments balance in US dollars.
However, Stripe will charge a 1.5% transaction fee with no flat fee, offering an easy and predictable option for businesses looking to expand into crypto payments.
The development will allow merchants to now accept popular USD-backed stablecoins, giving their customers more flexibility while being stable in terms of price fluctuations associated with other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. It will also allow businesses to tap into a growing group of buyers who already hold crypto wallets but may not necessarily use them.
Increasing use of stablecoin as payment method
The use of stablecoin as a payment method has grown rapidly in the last two years. According to a recent IMF report, the two largest stablecoins, Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), have tripled in value since 2023 to around $260 billion, with a trading volume of up to 90%.
Stablecoins are mainly used to trade crypto and send money across borders, with the Asia market dominating it with the highest trading activity so far. Meanwhile, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East also show high activity compared to their economies.
Stripe’s own blockchain for payments
Stripe has drawn more attention since announcing its own blockchain platform, Tempo, in September. This initiative was launched in partnership with leading venture firm Paradigm.
In October, the company secured $500 million in funding led by Thrive Capital, a firm run by Joshua Kushner, just shortly after Stripe acquired Bridge for over $1 billion. These movements highlight Stripe’s strategy to build a complete infrastructure for digital payment and combine it with its global payment platform using blockchain technology.
Recently, Swedish fintech company Klarna announced plans to issue its own USD-backed stablecoin, KlarnaUSD, on the Tempo blockchain. The stablecoin will integrate Klarna’s “buy now, pay later” service on-chain for 114 million users, offering faster cross-border payments and lower fees.
Also Read: U.S. SEC Ends Two-Year Probe Into ONDO Finance
