Stripe Goes Full Crypto: Launches Global Stablecoin Accounts in 100+ Countries

Fintech giant Stripe just made its biggest crypto play yet—rolling out stablecoin payment accounts worldwide. Because nothing says ’innovation’ like reinventing dollar-pegged banking with extra steps.

The move comes alongside Stripe’s aggressive AI investments, proving even payment processors aren’t immune to Silicon Valley’s ’throw blockchain and machine learning at everything’ strategy. Early access already live for developers.

Bankers: start pretending you saw this coming.

Global Stablecoin Adoption Accelerating

Launched during a period of explosive expansion in the stablecoin market, which as of May 2025 has exceeded $231 billion in total capitalization. Blockchain analytics show that stablecoins are becoming more and more prevalent in crypto transactions all throughout South America, where they work as both a medium of trade and a defense against local currency devaluation.

Stripe’s recently purchased stablecoin platform Bridge has teamed with Visa on a worldwide card-issuing program to boost stablecoin spending use. Through Visa cards linked to stablecoin wallets, this partnership will help fintech companies enable spending at around 150 million stores globally that accept Visa. During purchases, Bridge helps the merchant convert stablecoins into fiat money.

Stripe Unveils AI-Powered Payment Innovations

Along with their stablecoin push, Stripe presented a new AI foundation model for payments, developed on tens of billions of transactions to raise fraud detection and authorization rates. Known as the Payments Foundation Model, it combines “hundreds of subtle signals” every payment that specialist models cannot record.

glassberg, Emily Head of information for Sands, Stripe observed that the model has already showed remarkable performance, especially against card testing assaults, where it raised detection rates by 64% “practically overnight” – surpassing the 80% reduction obtained over two years with previous models.

“We couldn’t make use of our enormous data previously. Now we can,” Sands remarked.

Expanding Platform Capabilities

Stripe also revealed other platform improvements:

• Multi-currency accounts let companies handle USD, EUR, and GBP holding, conversion, and expenditure free from needless foreign exchange costs.
• Support for 25 new payment methods, including PIX and UPI, adds to over 125 payment options overall.
• A new “Orchestration” tool lets companies handle several payment sources from one dashboard.
• Klarna’s integration into Stripe’s consumer payments platform Link Smart Disputes, an artificial intelligence-powered method to handle conflicts automatically
• From 57 last year, expanded tax relief currently offered in 102 nations.

Said to be the “fastest-ever migration to Stripe Billing,” the business also disclosed that chip behemoth Nvidia just moved its “entire subscriber base” to Stripe Billing in just six weeks.

What’s Behind Stripe’s Renewed Crypto Strategy?

Stripe’s stablecoin accounts represent a significant pivot back toward cryptocurrency after the company shelved earlier efforts in 2018, citing high costs and slow transaction speeds. The company re-entered the sector in late 2024 with a “Pay with Crypto” option in partnership with Paxos.

Stripe paid reportedly $1.1 billion to acquire Bridge, a stablecoin platform, in February 2025. Originally started by former Coinbase executives Zach Abrams and Sean Yu, Bridge runs most of Stripe’s blockchain infrastructure.

Stripe embraces stablecoins in line with other big financial players including PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard. While Visa was lately claimed to be joining the Global Dollar Network (USDG), PayPal has been increasing the use of its own stablecoin, PayPal USD.

With a 38% rise from the year before and almost 1.3% of the world GDP, Stripe processed $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024, therefore setting the company to greatly affect the general acceptance of both stablecoins and AI-powered payment systems.