The payment giant announced partnerships with FTX, FTX US, Blockchain.com, Nifty Gateway, and Just Mining to launch a crypto business suite. The decision backtracks a 2018 decision to stop supporting Bitcoin due to the network’s slow transaction speeds and fees at the time.
Financial services company Stripe has announced its re-entry into the crypto sphere. The global payments giant announced a suite of products, offering businesses tools and APIs that make it easier for customers to buy and store crypto tokens, cash out, trade NFTs and handle compliance workflows like Know Your Customer (KYC).
As per the announcement, the company’s products will enable support for users to buy and sell over 135 cryptocurrencies with fiat currencies in at least 180 countries. Stripe co-founder John Collison announced via Twitter and shared different ways the firm plans to support Web3 companies via its crypt APIs.
Making it easier than ever for people to invest in crypto
The firm also announced partnerships with FTX, FTX US, Blockchain.com, Nifty Gateway, and Just Mining to launch the crypto business suite. Currently, Stripe’s crypto services are only available to businesses in the U.S., the U.K., and the European Union. Its NFT services for marketplaces are supported in these regions and Japan.
Commenting about the new deal, FTX’s Head of Strategy, Tristan Yver, said the partnership would help the firm attract a wider mainstream audience by making the process of acquiring digital assets simpler. He stated:
“The optimizations we made in our payments setup with Stripe deliver the smooth on-ramp experience FTX’s growing customer base demands. We’re able to multiply revenue by making it easier than ever for people to invest in crypto.”
A company with a similar name, Strike, quickly filled in the gap
Stripe also announced launching an open drop NFT collectibles christened “Cube Thingies” via Nifty Gateway as part of the initiative. It will cost users between $242.42 and $424.24 to mint each of the NFTs, and all proceeds from the sale will go to non-profit healthcare tech organization Watsi.
Stripe has had an on-and-off relationship with cryptocurrencies over the years. The firm was among the first institutional adopters in 2014 but ended the Bitcoin support in 2018, calling the cryptocurrency less useful as a means of payment. A company with a similar name, Strike, quickly filled in the gap.
However, Stripe began posting job listings to create a crypto team and added crypto VC Matt Huang to its board several weeks later. Stripe’s re-entry into the crypto sphere could become a threat to existing crypto payments processors that lack the company’s expansive reach.
Tom is a freelance writer with over 10-years’ experience in content creation, blog writing, and SEO specializing in the blockchain and cryptocurrency niche. As a philosophical figurehead, he believes that to make our world a better place, we must invest in incorruptible products and procedures, of which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are leading examples.
