Payment firm Stripe is reportedy in advance talks to acquire stablecoin platform Bridge, according to sources cited by Bloomberg.
After a six year hiatus, Stripe returned to crypto in April, allowing merchants to accept stablecoins for online payments. According to figures released by the payments giant individuals from more than 70 countries used stablecoins for online transactions within the first 24 hours of the launch.
Bridge’s stablecoin-focused platform is designed to allow businesses to create, store, send, and receive stablecoins - Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. The company in August raised $58 million from major investors including Sequoia, Ribbit, and Index Ventures.
After switching on support for bitcoin in 2014, Stripe ditched crypto, saying that crazy price fluctuations and higher fees rendered it as unusable as a form of payment.
Announcing the move back into the market in April, Stripe co-founder and President John Collison remarked: "Crypto is finding real utility. With transaction speeds increasing and costs coming down, we’re seeing crypto finally making sense as a means of exchange."
The firm's reversion has since moved at pace, inking a deal with Coinbase in April for fiat-to-crypto transactions using USDC and integrating with the Paxos stablecoin platform earlier this month.