Today, Checkout.com unveils its stablecoin settlement solution, leveraging Fireblocks' new crypto payment technology.
This offers merchants the flexibility of 24/7 settlement including weekends and holidays — increasing access to cashflow and significantly reducing operational complexity. Checkout.com is the first PSP to have access to Fireblocks' crypto payouts technology. With this access, Checkout.com is also the first to successfully deploy automatic fiat to stablecoin conversion for their merchants as they receive and process funds from customers.
To date, Checkout.com has facilitated settlement of over $300 million using USDC, a fully collateralized and redeemable USD-pegged stablecoin, via its private stablecoins settlement beta program. During the beta, Checkout.com successfully tested, refined and optimized ways for customers' online fiat transactions to be paid to merchants through USDC.
In addition, Checkout.com's integration with Fireblocks marks the crypto technology provider's expansion into the payments space following the acquisition of First Digital earlier this year. Fireblocks' new crypto payment technology is only available to select PSPs with additional payment capabilities and tools for business to be unveiled later this year. Checkout.com is among the early PSP partners to deploy this new technology.
"At Fireblocks, we believe that every business will become a digital assets business with the advent of Web3," said Ran Goldi, Vice President of Payments at Fireblocks. "Traditionally, merchant payouts are limited to 9-5 on weekdays excluding public holidays and are further delayed through batch processing over several business days. Checkout.com's weekend settlement means that merchants are no longer restricted by arbitrary settlement times. With our in-house team's deep knowledge and expertise in digital asset payments, Fireblocks looks forward to our continued collaboration with Checkout.com to bring even more game-changing solutions to the payments space."
Transak Head of Expansion & Partnerships, Joe Start, said, "Weekend settlement helps to free liquidity constraints we have historically faced as a developer integration making decentralised applications accessible. This enables us to process more payments and we are delighted to have worked with Checkout.com on such a significant step forward for the payments industry as a whole."
At the start, Checkout.com's stablecoin settlement supports USDC with plans to expand to a wider range of assets over time. The company's pilot project already includes several crypto exchanges and tech-forward merchants and is actively expanding—with FTX at the forefront of this work.
Adam Jacobs, Head of Payments from FTX said, "Working with Checkout to pioneer stablecoin settlement has been an exciting development for our business and for the entire Web3 space. We're especially excited to see more businesses using crypto natively aligning with our mission to expand the digital currency ecosystem and bring in more institutional crypto holders."
"Stablecoins started as a fiat-denominated asset used by crypto traders to easily move in and out of more volatile crypto assets," explained Jess Houlgrave, Head of Crypto Strategy at Checkout.com. "but we believe they will also play a fundamental role in improving the underlying payment landscape— the fact that we're the first full stack payments provider to successfully pilot an end-to-end solution with weekend merchant-side settlement capability is testament to our commitment to crypto3. We're investing heavily to ensure we can fulfil our mission to enable businesses and their communities to thrive in the digital economy - which we believe includes Web3 and as we see the market reaction, we hope to see more merchants, both crypto native and non crypto native adopt this."]
Today's announcement comes on the heels of Checkout.com publishing its Demystifying Crypto report, which found finance leaders surveyed showing significant appetite to hold stablecoins on their balance sheets. Almost 40% of those surveyed said they would like to use decentralised finance for treasury management and settle payments in stablecoins.