The company has a long history with cryptos, as it onboarded Bitcoin in 2014–only to remove it in 2018 due to latency issues. Now, Stripe believes that the industry deserves another chance and has partnered with crypto leaders to expand its services.
Stripe, a fintech giant based in the US, announced that it will become more involved in the cryptocurrency industry. The company will add fiat payment support for cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The company’s co-founder, John Collison, tweeted on March 10th that the service will now support crypto businesses, including exchanges, on-ramps, NFT marketplaces, and wallets.
Furthermore, he stressed that this will not only include pay-ins, but also payouts, identity verifications, KYC, fraud prevention, and more.
What Does this Mean for Stripe Users?
With Stripe expanding its involvement with crypto, its clients can expect a number of new options and capabilities. Companies that use Stripe’s APIs will not only be able to accept fiat payments for crypto, but also pay out users in fiat, use data for detection and blocking of fraudulent transactions, and provide digital wallets.
It is also worth noting that Stripe entered a number of partnerships in order to offer this solution, such as FTX and FTX US, Nifty Gateway, Blockchain.com, and Just Mining. Tristan Yver, who works as FTX’s head of strategy, pointed out that the move will bring a significantly greater number of users, as the company is now making it fairly simple to purchase cryptocurrencies. He noted that the optimizations will deliver a smooth on-ramp experience to the FTX exchange’s growing customer base.
Stripe has a Long and Complex Relationship with Crypto
Stripe previously added support for Bitcoin in 2014, only to discontinue it in 2018. The company stated at the time that crypto was not a robust means of payment. (Coincidentally, this was also the time of the Great Crypto Winter, when cryptocurrency prices were crashing after the 2017 bull run.) Stripe claimed that its main issue with the crypto industry was lack of scalability and slow transaction speeds. The company did not reject crypto completely, however, as it did say that it would be willing to return to the sector provided that the payments became more viable.
Years went by, and then last October, the company suddenly came out with job listings for a new crypto team, as it began to re-enter the space.
But once again, Stripe is giving its full support to crypto. The company has even launched an NFT collection called Cube Thingies, using Nifty Gateway.
