Payments titan Stripe announced a new feature that’ll allow businesses to be able to pay their users in cryptocurrency, specifically stablecoin USDC. The company said on Friday that it’ll be starting with Twitter. Twitter, will therefore be the first company to integrate Stripe’s new payments feature. Starting Friday, Twitter will allow creators on its platform to receive their earnings for its paid Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows features via USDC. USDC is a stable coin backed by the US dollar.
The move by Stripe will be its first major dive into cryptocurrencies since it turned its back on the world’s most popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin about four years ago. Back in January 2018, Stripe stopped accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment on its platform as a result of how volatile it was as well as it is inefficient for making day-to-day transactions. The company has, however, opened its arms to cryptocurrencies again and it makes sense that it is launching a feature with USDC. USDC’s value is pegged to the US dollar and is far less susceptible to volatility.
The company is also exploring Wed3 – a tech movement pushing for the creation of a decentralized version of the internet based on blockchain technology. The company formed a team committed to exploring cryptocurrencies and Web3 last year. This, alongside Stripe’s CEO John Collison, hinted that the company would imminently acknowledge and associate with crypto again.
In a blog post published on Friday, Karen Sharma, product manager at Stripe’s crypto unit said that “While the ‘store of value’ aspects of cryptocurrencies typically receives the most attention, we view the prospect of ‘open-access global financial rails’ as being at least equally compelling. As a result, we’ve been exploring ways to use cryptocurrency-based platforms to unlock broader access.”
Stripe’s new cryptocurrency payouts feature will run on the Polygon network. Polygon Network is a “Layer 2” solution based on the Ethereum network designed to handle transactions faster and at a lower cost.
According to Karen Sharma, “We plan to add support for additional rails and payout currencies over time.”
The new feature which will be integrated first by Twitter comes amid a proposed takeover by billionaire and CEO of Tesla – Elon Musk.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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