Jessy, Jinse Finance
On June 11th, global payment giant Stripe announced the acquisition of crypto wallet service provider Privy, which comes just four months after completing the acquisition of the stablecoin platform Bridge.
By acquiring Privy and Bridge, Stripe is accelerating its layout in stablecoin and crypto payment infrastructure. As crypto compliance continues to develop, a traditional financial payment unicorn's proactive crypto deployment is not an isolated case. Examples include PayPal launching its own stablecoin PYUSD and Visa's continuous exploration of stablecoins, all indicating that traditional fintech giants with deep user bases and extensive payment networks are no longer satisfied with peripheral crypto services. They want to take the lead in crypto payments, and crypto payments are gradually integrating into mainstream finance.
A Global Payment Unicorn Born in a Garage
Stripe's story began in 2010 when Patrick Collison and his brother John Collison founded Stripe with the support of Y Combinator, a famous startup incubator in Silicon Valley. At that time, online payment integration was extremely complex for developers, requiring interaction with banks, payment gateways, and fraud prevention systems, consuming significant time and resources. The Collison brothers keenly captured this pain point, with an exceptionally clear vision: to make network payments as simple as adding a line of code to a webpage.
Stripe was born, abstracting and standardizing complex financial payment processing through concise APIs, encapsulated in just a few lines of code. Developers could quickly integrate credit card payments, subscription billing, and other functions without deep understanding of financial underlying logic. This innovation quickly won the hearts of many Silicon Valley startups and developers, becoming an engine for its early rapid growth.
As time passed, Stripe's business landscape continuously expanded, far beyond its initial payment processing. It gradually built a complete "Internet financial operating system", providing enterprises with a comprehensive suite of online payment processing, subscription billing, anti-fraud, and other financial infrastructure services. Their services support global transactions for companies from Amazon and Google to numerous startups, reportedly serving millions of customers worldwide.
Specifically, in payment processing, Stripe supports cardholders in 195 countries and regions, accepting mainstream debit and credit cards, digital wallets, local bank debits, local bank transfers, and other payment methods. It can handle online payment services for over 135 currencies, helping enterprises simplify global expansion and optimize payment infrastructure. Through Stripe Billing's subscription and invoicing functions, customers help enterprises build and expand recurring revenue business models, with capabilities to set periodic billing and manage subscription-related matters. Additionally, it provides card issuance services, allowing enterprises to create, distribute, and manage virtual and physical cards through Stripe Issuing to meet various business needs.
Stripe's greatest success lies in its very clear product characteristics, strong market targeting, and cross-platform usability. By providing customized payment solutions for small and medium-sized startups, it can significantly challenge payment giant PayPal.
After more than a decade of development, Stripe has become a unicorn in the payment track, with its valuation reaching $95 billion in 2021. Stripe has numerous renowned investment companies behind it. Y Combinator was its early seed fund provider. Sequoia Capital not only was an early investor but also participated in almost every funding round. Other investors like Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, CapitalG, GV, Allianz X, Axa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Funds, and the Irish National Treasury Management Agency have also participated in Stripe's financing at different stages.
Ambitions Long Surpassing Traditional Payments
Stripe has always been a company willing to try new things, such as launching an AI foundation model for payments in 2024. Its entry into the crypto industry was also earlier compared to other payment giants.
As early as 2014, it began experimenting with Bitcoin payments, being one of the first companies to allow Bitcoin as a payment method, though it was suspended in 2018.
However, it did not abandon its focus on blockchain and crypto, instead continuing to participate through various means. When the Stellar Foundation was first established in 2014, Stripe invested $3 million by purchasing Stellar tokens and discussed how to apply its technology system to payment services. In 2024, Stripe reintroduced crypto payments, allowing US businesses to receive and pay in USDC, followed by the acquisition of Bridge and most recently, the acquisition of Privy.
The June 11th announced acquisition of crypto wallet service provider Privy aims to integrate its leading "embedded wallet" technology. Privy's technology enables users to easily create and use non-custodial wallets for crypto payments and interactions within familiar platforms like e-commerce websites and social platforms, without downloading separate wallet apps or managing complex private keys, significantly lowering the entry barrier to Web3 for ordinary users.
These two acquisitions perfectly complement Stripe's crypto puzzle's core sections. Bridge provides stablecoin access, management, and settlement basic services. Privy offers a revolutionary embedded wallet experience. Its technology allows seamless integration of non-custodial wallets into existing Web2 applications, enabling users to safely manage crypto assets and make payments without leaving familiar interfaces. This completely overcomes the biggest obstacle to user entry into the crypto world—complex wallet creation, private key management, and poor user experience.
Combined with Stripe's pre-existing global fiat on/off-ramps, extensive merchant network, mature compliance risk control system, and strong payment settlement capabilities.
The perfect combination of these three parts means Stripe can provide enterprise customers with a solution from issuing or connecting stablecoins, to enabling end-users to easily own and use wallets for payments, to processing on-chain transactions and ultimately efficiently and compliantly settling them into fiat currency.
For the crypto industry, leveraging Stripe's massive industry influence, crypto payments will be adopted by more merchants.
Stripe's actions indicate that traditional fintech giants with deep user bases and extensive payment networks are no longer satisfied with peripheral crypto services. They are forcefully entering and directly controlling the core layers of crypto payments, such as stablecoin issuance and user wallet entry points. This is similar to trends like PayPal launching its own stablecoin PYUSD and Visa's continuous exploration of stablecoins for cross-border settlements. This also signals that crypto payments are accelerating integration and reshaping mainstream finance.
