Illustration of two commemorative bitcoins with green background.
Artur Widak | Nurphoto | beautiful pictures
Stripe will allow businesses to pay their users via cryptocurrency, starting with Twitter, in the latest sign of how big financial firms are warming up to digital assets. any.
The $95 billion online payments company said Friday that it will begin offering merchants the ability to pay in crypto via stablecoin USDC, issued by the crypto company Circle. Stablecoins are tokens that are pegged to fiat currencies to maintain a stable price. In the case of USDC, as the name suggests, the cryptocurrency is backed by U.S. dollar.
Twitter will be the first to integrate the new payment method. Starting Friday, the social media platform – which has been a hot topic of discussion lately about a potential takeover by Tesla CEO Elon Musk – will allow certain creators to receive their earnings from Marked space and Super follow features in USDC.
This is Stripe’s first major push into the cryptocurrency since dropping support for bitcoin four years ago. San Francisco-based startup stop accepting bitcoin payments in january 2018cites the digital currency’s reputation for volatile price swings and inefficiencies in the execution of daily transactions.
But the company has since warmed to crypto amid more hype.”Web3“a movement in technology calling for the creation of a decentralized version of the internet based on blockchain technology. Last year, Stripe formed a group dedicated to exploring crypto and Web3. In November, the co-founder Stripe founder, John Collison, refers to the company may provide crypto support soon Again.
“While the ‘store of value’ aspects of cryptocurrencies generally receive the most attention, we view the prospect of an ‘open-access global financial rail’ as at least equally compelling.” , Stripe said in a blog post Friday. “As a result, we have been exploring ways to use crypto-based platforms to unlock broader access.”
The company’s crypto payments feature will run on the Polygon network, a so-called “Layer 2” solution that sits on top of the Ethereum network to process transactions faster and at lower costs. Bitcoin, ether, and other cryptocurrencies have faced criticism for slow transaction times and high fees.
“We plan to add support for additional rails and payment currencies over time,” Stripe said.
Stripe isn’t the only company opening its platform to digital currency – in fact, the company is said to be quite late. Passport, Master Card and PayPal and other major payment processors have all announced moves of their own in the space. It was a time when the price of digital currency was still rising.
Several major cryptocurrencies have fallen sharply from record highs recently, with bitcoin, the world’s largest coin, down more than 40% from its November peak of nearly $69,000. Bitcoin was trading at around $40,373.36 on Friday, down about 4% over the past 24 hours.
