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Key Takeaways
- Stripe’s stablecoin card customers include Kraken, Ramp and Morse, and card spending in stablecoins reached about $1.2 billion last month, roughly triple a year earlier.
- The offering combines Stripe’s card-issuing business with Bridge and is designed to stay open to multiple stablecoins and blockchains.
- Stripe is also exploring tokenized deposits, DeFi use cases and more digital assets, though stablecoins remain the main focus.
Stripe is expanding its stablecoin card business to more than 100 countries by the end of the year, betting that dollar-pegged digital tokens can become a standard payment option alongside traditional currencies.
Henri Stern, co-founder and CEO of crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, which Stripe acquired last year, has taken on an additional role overseeing stablecoins and crypto across the company, Stripe said.
A Fast-Growing Corner of the Stablecoin Market
Stripe’s stablecoin card customers currently include crypto exchange Kraken, fintech company Ramp and payments app Morse. Stern said in an interview that the more than 100-country expansion target reflects demand already building within that customer base.
Stablecoin cards represent a fast-growing segment of the broader digital dollar market, now worth more than $300 billion. About $1.2 billion in stablecoins were spent through cards last month, according to data from PaymentScan, roughly triple the volume recorded a year earlier. That figure remains a small fraction of the global card payments market overall, but points to stablecoins moving beyond crypto trading and cross-border transfers into everyday retail spending.
Built on Existing Infrastructure Rather Than a Separate Stack
Stripe’s approach integrates stablecoins into payment infrastructure it already operates rather than building a parallel crypto-specific system. The company has issued more than 400 million cards and processed hundreds of billions of dollars in card volume since 2018, according to Stern. Its stablecoin card offering combines that existing card-issuing business with Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in 2024.
For a company such as Ramp, that structure can mean extending a corporate card into new countries using stablecoin rails rather than separately building out banking and payment connections in each new market. Kraken, meanwhile, has explored letting customers spend directly from accounts where they already hold digital assets, without first converting those holdings into traditional currency.
One Piece of a Broader Blockchain Payments Strategy
The stablecoin card expansion is part of a wider blockchain payments buildout Stripe has pursued following its Bridge and Privy acquisitions. The company separately partnered with crypto investment firm Paradigm to develop Tempo, a blockchain designed specifically for payments, and is a founding investor in Open Standard, the company behind Open USD, a stablecoin positioned as a competitor to Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT. Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams has since moved to lead Open Standard full time.
Stern said those products are designed to interoperate closely without locking customers into using Stripe’s full suite exclusively.
“Completely stablecoin agnostic, completely blockchain agnostic.”
Many of Stripe’s current stablecoin card programs run on Circle’s USDC specifically, but Stern said the company intends for its infrastructure to remain open to multiple stablecoins and blockchains rather than favoring a single option, consistent with his broader view that stablecoins should function as another payment option built into products businesses already use rather than a separate system customers must learn independently.
Serving Both Crypto-Native and Traditional Customers
Stern said Stripe aims to serve both customers who want stablecoin-specific functionality and the much larger base of Stripe users who rely primarily on traditional fiat payment rails. He argued that crypto’s value lies partly in its open, modular structure and that customers should be able to combine Stripe’s various payment tools in whatever configuration suits their business.
Beyond stablecoin cards, Stripe is also exploring tokenized deposits, decentralized finance use cases and support for a broader range of digital assets as payment methods, according to Stern. He said, though, that the bulk of the company’s current work remains centered on stablecoins specifically.
That emphasis suggests Stripe views stablecoins as the most immediately scalable piece of its broader crypto strategy, with the other initiatives developing on a longer timeline as the underlying infrastructure and regulatory environment continue to mature.
