Stripe President, John Collison, has welcomed crypto payments back to the platform, allowing merchants to make transactions using stablecoins.
Collison delivered a speech and demonstration at the company’s Global Internet Economy (GIE) conference, displaying to the audience how crypto had been reintegrated into the Stripe payments platform.
The company had moved away from crypto payments back in 2014, although its engagement with blockchain technology and crypto as a whole did not stop there.
In his demo at GIE, Collison outlined how users can select the wallet the coin they want to pay with, e.g. Bitcoin or Solana, and then the wallet, e.g. Coinbase or Phantom, and make an instant crypto transaction with a network fee.
Sharing the news on X, Collision declared that ‘crypto is back’, whilst he concluded his demonstration by summarising that this is ‘crypto coming back to Stripe’.
The return of crypto payments to Stripe comes at a time of increased interest in the market, particularly Bitcoin, which has seen its valuation soar in recent months off the back of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval of a spot ETF.
The SEC had been resisting calls for a Bitcoin ETF, led by asset managers Grayscale and Blackrock, for some time. The regular relented in January and approved the ETF, enabling entities to own Bitcoin and for individuals to invest in it via a pool.
In the aftermath of the SEC approval, Bitcoin’s valuation surged to $60,000 by 28 February, its highest value since 2021, which since went on to break it’s all-time high, suprassing $73,000. The approval marked a significant boost to the crypto market, which had taken some hits due to public confidence falling after the FTX and Binance controversies.
Last week’s Bitcoin halving, a four-year event whereby the number of coins available is cut in half to control its circulation, could also have an impact on value. The cryptocurrency’s value as of today (26 April) is $64,000 according to Coindesk.
Although this marks the return of crypto payments to Stripe’s platform, as noted above, the Irish company – headquartered in Dublin and San Francisco – did not completely cut off its interactions with crypto or blockchain in 2014, having worked with Blockchain.com and Twitter (now X) on crypto initiatives.
