San Francisco-based Stripe partners with Twitter to make a comeback in the Crypto space. Twitter is going to be the first company to merge the new payment method into monetization products, the company highlights.
Although its competitors are already striving in the field, it is to see how Stripe performs. Stripe, the fintech giant based in San Francisco recently announced its latest move in the cryptocurrency space by collaborating with the social media platform Twitter.
Stripe would enable a small group of creators to send and receive payments in USDC through Connect, its payment platform. Hence, creators can directly manage their account details via the Stripe Express app, in the new pilot program.
Twitter is going to be the first company to merge the new payment method into monetization products. The creators would be facilitated by the social media platform to get their earnings on Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows instantly settled in crypto wallets.
Twitter would not be in charge of acquiring and storing cryptocurrencies as Stripe would take care of all crypto-related operations and complexities.
All the on-chain transactions of the firm are supported by the Polygon network as it allows high speed, low gas fees, broad wallet compatibility, and integration with Ethereum.
And it further will allow the creators who get funds via the program to bridge their assets to Ethereum and swap them quickly for various cryptocurrencies. As of now, the company supports payments only in USDC, but it is planning on more chains and payout cryptocurrencies to be added to the platform in the future.
According to the fintech firm, they plan to support crypto payouts in over 120 countries by the end of 2022.
Earlier in 2018, Stripe terminated Bitcoin services as it was concerned regarding volatility. But last year John Collison, its CEO, highlighted its comeback plans in the crypto space.
Although this is not the first time a payments services firm is collaborating with someone to grow in the crypto industry, its rivals like PayPal, Visa, etc have already taken similar moves earlier.
“Stripe will handle all crypto-related complexity and operations,” Sharma explained. “No code changes are required, and platforms can avoid taking on the challenges of acquiring, storing or transferring crypto themselves.”
Twitter’s product lead for creators, Esther Crawford, said this offering will give Twitter’s power users “more choice in how they get paid”. For Stripe, it’s a move towards greater financial inclusion. “This will enable many people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to hold dollars to do so,” said Sharma.
“While we are continuously expanding our geographic coverage, many countries remain out of reach in part due to the intrinsic complexity involved in supporting heterogeneous local payments systems. Unfortunately, this makes participation in the online economy harder for many of those who stand to benefit most.