Stablecoins: Stripe buys Bridge for $1.1 billion

Stripe is speeding up in the Web3 world. After a few weeks of negotiations, the American payments giant has just got its hands on Bridge, a start-up specialising in stablecoins.

To buy the Texan start-up, the Collison brothers - John and Patrick - broke their piggy banks as they put $1.1 billion on the table, as confirmed by TechCrunch and other media. This is the biggest acquisition in the history of the company, which was founded in 2010.

On X (Twitter), Patrick Collison praised the acquisition of Bridge. "Stripe will build the best stablecoin infrastructure and we're thrilled to welcome Bridge for that purpose," he tweeted on Monday.

Specialising in stablecoins

Launched in 2023, Bridge has developed a platform that essentially does two things: creates stablecoins and manages stablecoin payments.

In recent months, the start-up has seen the number of its customers and its revenues increase. Buoyed by this momentum, it raised $58 million this summer from Sequoia, Ribbit (which has also invested in France's Morpho), Index and Haun Ventures.

In an interview in August with Primary Venture Partners, Bridge revenue boss Marco Mahrus explained that "businesses are increasingly using onchain payments to save time compared to the traditional system like Swift".

In the first half of 2024, stablecoin volumes traded on the Ethereum blockchain surpassed those of Paypal, at $4800 billion, according to a report on payments that we have just published.

An unavoidable topic

With this acquisition, Stripe confirms a little more its rise to power in Web3.

In the spring, the US payments giant reintroduced cryptos as a payment method; they had been removed from the platform in 2018 due to a lack of demand.

A few days ago, Stripe also announced that USDC - a stablecoin whose value is indexed to the dollar - was now available as a means of payment for the millions of merchants who use the platform.

Stripe is obviously not the only giant to take an interest in stablecoin topics. Some banks such as Société Générale, via its subsidiary SG Forge, have their own stablecoin (EURCV).

A few weeks ago, Visa announced the launch of a stablecoin platform. This will be available in 2025. Spanish bank BBVA is already working on launching its own stablecoin. And it shouldn't be the only one.