Payment giant Stripe is back in the cryptocurrency business with the launch of a suite of products to support crypto payments on its platform.
“Stripe now supports crypto businesses: exchanges, on-ramps, wallets, and NFT marketplaces. Not just pay-ins but payouts, KYC (Know Your Customer) and identity verification, fraud prevention, and lots more,” Stripe co-founder John Collison announced on Twitter.
Its clients already include Blockchain.com, Nifty Gateway, Just Mining, and the $32 billion-valued FTX, whose president, Brett Harrison, testified that Stripe’s automated identity verification “greatly increased speed of KYC [know your customer] processing, higher rates of automated approvals, and a smoother UX for our customers.”
However, Stripe has lagged behind its major competitors Block (formerly Square) and PayPal in venturing into crypto. Block—led by noted blockchain enthusiast Jack Dorsey, who renamed his company after the Web3 technology—has offered crypto capabilities for years.
PayPal and its subsidiary Venmo have both supported buying, selling, and holding crypto since early 2021, and PayPal is also reportedly exploring a launch os own stablecoin.
According to an announcement, the partnership will also see Stripe providing payment services for the exchange. Based on the partnership, FTX and FTX users will be able to buy crypto using debit cards and direct bank transfers via Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions.
Today’s announcement is the first major crypto-related news from the company since it announced the creation of a team in October last year.
At the time, the company stated that it was hiring engineers and designers to build the future of Web3 payments.
In 2018, Stripe wrote, bitcoin had “evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange.” But once-high transaction costs have fallen, and Stripe started rebuilding its crypto team last fall.
The toolkit for crypto businesses include API integrations like Stripe Connect, which allows users to pay out fiat currencies in over 45 countries, and Stripe Identity, an identity-verification system to mitigate fraud.
The payments giant partnered with FTX to improve payments processing and build a fiat-to-crypto on-ramp for the crypto exchange. The partnership builds on an existing relationship: FTX had previously integrated Stripe Identity to improve its know-your-customer processes