Payments giant Stripe and corporate spend management player Brex have unveiled products that bring stablecoins closer to the mainstream.
Stripe has unveiled Open Issuance, a platform that lets businesses launch and manage their own stablecoins with just a few lines of code.
The company notes that businesses are adopting stablecoins quickly, with total supply growing 57% in the last 12 months. But by building on coins issued by external providers, they’re unable to reap all the potential benefits. For example, a neobank that sits on large stablecoin dollar deposits doesn’t retain the yield itself. When its customers want to redeem their stablecoins for cash, they’re subject to burn fees.
Open Issuance - powered by Bridge, the stablecoin platform Stripe recently acquired - is designed to make it easy for firms to mint and burn coins freely, and customize their reserves to manage the ratio between cash and treasuries and choose their preferred partners. Treasuries are managed by BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, and Superstate. Cash is held by Lead Bank to provide liquidity as necessary.
“If money movement is core to your business, you should build with stablecoins. But don't build on top of someone else's coin,” says Zach Abrams, CEO, Bridge. “With Open Issuance, businesses can build on top of stablecoins that they customize and control, so that the benefits of this important technology flow directly to the people and businesses using them.”
Separately, Brex will soon let customers with a business account accept stablecoins with automatic conversion into USD in their accounts and send stablecoins directly from their USD balances. In addition, customers will be able to pay their card balances with stablecoins.
“Stablecoins make it possible to move millions of dollars across borders in seconds, but using them typically requires fragmented workflows and managing multiple platforms,” says Pedro Franceschi, CEO, Brex. “With today’s launch, forward-looking companies across industries, from AI to crypto, will manage their largest payments and mission-critical expenses on Brex, in a single, secure platform.”