Stripe will roll out support for USDC on Base.
Stripe, the multinational payments firm that processed more than $1 trillion in volume last year, has teamed up with Coinbase in the company’s latest foray into crypto.
Announced on June 27, Stripe said it is readying to launch support for USD Coin (USDC) on Base, the Layer 2 network incubated by Base.
Per the deal, U.S.-based Stripe users will be able to use the platform’s fiat-to-crypto onramp to convert U.S. dollars into USDC. Stripe will also enable users to send USDC to users in more than 150 countries via its “crypto payouts” feature.
Coinbase will also incorporate Stripe’s fiat-to-crypto onramp into Coinbase Wallet, allowing users to purchase cryptocurrency via credit cards and Apple Pay.
“These three key integrations lay a strong foundation for Stripe and Coinbase to begin building a better payments future for users around the world,” Coinbase said.
USDC is the second-largest stablecoin, despite shedding 40% of its market cap after peaking at $55 billion in June 2022. USDC currently boasts a $32.6 billion market cap, according to The Defiant’s crypto price feeds.
Stripe returns to crypto
Stripe’s partnership with Coinbase is the company’s latest foray into crypto after tentatively resuming support for digital assets in April.
At the time, the company rolled out services allowing merchants to accept stablecoins as payment for online transactions and enabled USDC payouts for Twitter creators via the Solana and Ethereum networks.
“Crypto is back,” said John Collison, Stripe’s co-founder and president. “Stripe will start supporting global stablecoin payments this summer. Transactions instantly settle on-chain and automatically convert to fiat.”
Stripe first added support for Bitcoin payments in early 2014 but ceased the service in 2018, stating that a combination of increasing transaction confirmation times and rising fees were undermining BTC’s value proposition as a vehicle for payments.
“Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange,” Stripe said.
However, in March 2022, Stripe announced plans to “give crypto businesses access to today’s global financial infrastructure,” asserting that its “optimism for the future of crypto” was not unfounded amid increasing mainstream adoption of digital assets.
The following month, Stripe began progressively rolling out support for stablecoins, announcing that select businesses could support payouts in USDC via the Polygon Network, starting with Twitter.
In October 2023, MetaMask also introduced a fiat on-ramp for U.S. users using Stripe via its popular mobile app and browser extension.
Base activity surges
News of the partnership coincides with activity on Blast rocketing to new all-time highs.
According to L2beat, Base posted an all-time high of 42 transactions per second (TPS) on June 27, marking an increase of nearly 878% since the year began.
Base has also emerged as the second-largest Layer 2 network by total value locked (TVL) with $7.33 billion after growing 887% since the start of the year. DefiLlama estimates that the TVL Base’s DeFi ecosystem grew 273% during the first half of 2024 to tag $1.7 billion in TVL, up 250% since the start of the year.
Base’s recent growth has been propelled by memecoin mania, with opportunistic users creating more than 650,000 tokens on Base in 2024, according to Dune Analytics.
Last week, Base became the second-ranked network based on monthly active decentralized exchange (DEX) users this month.
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