Global payments giant Stripe is building what it calls “the AWS for money,” and cryptography is at the heart of its plans.
Speaking at the RWA Summit in Cannes, France, Stripe’s head of crypto market entry, Adrien Duchateau, said the company is currently integrating stablecoins and blockchain across its core payments stack with the aim of modernizing the way money moves globally.
“We are putting more stacks on-chain for each product,” he said.
The move builds on the company’s long, albeit uneven, history with cryptocurrencies. Stripe was one of the earliest big tech companies to adopt Bitcoin, enabling BTC payments in 2014, but pulled the plug in 2018 after volatility made it impractical for merchants, Duchateau said. The company returned in 2021 with a dedicated crypto team, betting that the underlying technology was mature enough to support real-world use, he added.
Faster payments with stablecoins
The company’s blockchain ambitions are focused on solving the core problem that global payments remain slow and expensive. Duchateau explained that cross-border remittances still rely on systems such as SWIFT and can take several days to clear. When platforms pay creators and contractors, delays often impact payment schedules.
Stripe processes nearly $2 trillion in payments annually (about 2% of global GDP) and serves more than 5 million businesses around the world, so even incremental improvements to payments can have a far-reaching impact, he said.
“We operate on a T+3 network,” he said, meaning that transactions often take three days from the moment of payment to settlement. “When you reduce that to zero, that’s a big change.”
To realize that vision, Stripe acquired stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2024, followed by the acquisition of cryptocurrency wallet provider Privy. It also partnered with crypto investment firm Paradigm to develop a payments-focused blockchain called Tempo, which went live last month with infrastructure partners including Mastercard, UBS, Klarna, and Visa.
The company has already rolled out stablecoin functionality. Merchants can accept stablecoins at checkout, including Shopify, while platforms like Remote.com allow users to receive payments in cryptocurrencies. Through Bridge, we also help fintech companies like Klarna and Slash issue and integrate stablecoins into their operations.
Where banking rails are lacking
Demand is also occurring in places where traditional systems cannot accommodate. Duchateau pointed to an increasing number of users in emerging markets seeking dollar exposure and customers turning to stablecoins after card payments fail.
“We are seeing people whose cards have been declined switch to stablecoins,” he said.
Stripe’s approach is not to replace fiat currencies, but to abstract away the differences. Duchateau said that over time, users should no longer need to know whether a transaction is executed on traditional or blockchain rails.
He said Stripe’s ambition is to become the “AWS for money,” routing and coordinating the movement of funds across the system in the same way that cloud platforms manage computing resources on a global scale.
This also includes future products that go beyond payments, such as offering yield and access to capital in markets that Stripe has not previously been able to reach. Using emerging countries like Argentina as an example, Duchateau pointed out that stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) have the potential to enable services that are difficult to provide through traditional banking.
“This technology didn’t exist before, and now we’re at a point where we can actually make it happen,” he said. “We’re so excited we’re doubling down.”
