Global payments giant Stripe is building what it calls “AWS for money,” and crypto is at the center of that plan.
Speaking at the RWA Summit in Cannes, France, Adrien Duchâteau, head of cryptocurrency marketing at Stripe, said the company is now integrating stablecoins and blockchain into its core payments stack as it looks to modernize the way money moves globally.
“We are putting more of our stack into the chain product by product,” he said.
The move is based on the company’s long, if uneven, history with cryptocurrencies. Stripe was one of the first big tech companies to adopt bitcoin allowing payments in BTC as early as 2014 before withdrawing in 2018 as volatility made it impractical for merchants, Duchâteau said. The company returned in 2021 with a team dedicated to cryptocurrencies, betting that the underlying technology had matured enough to support real-world use, he added.
Speed up payments with stablecoins
The company’s blockchain ambition focuses on solving a core problem: global payments remain slow and expensive. Cross-border transfers, Duchâteau explained, still rely on systems like SWIFT, which can take days to clear. For platforms that pay creators or contractors, that delay often dictates payment schedules.
Stripe processes nearly $2 trillion in annual payments (about 2% of global GDP) and serves more than 5 million businesses worldwide, so even incremental improvements in settlement could have wide-reaching effects, he said.
“We work on T+3 networks,” he said, meaning a transaction typically takes three days from payment to settlement. “If you reduce that to zero, that’s a magnitude change.”
To make that vision a reality, Stripe acquired stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2024 and later purchased crypto 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 is already implementing stablecoin features. Merchants can accept stablecoins at checkout, including through Shopify, while platforms like Remote.com allow users to receive payments in cryptocurrency. Through Bridge, it also helps fintechs like Klarna and Slash issue and integrate stablecoins into their operations.
Where banking barriers fall short
Demand is emerging in places where traditional systems are not sufficient. Duchâteau pointed to users in emerging markets seeking exposure to the dollar, as well as a growing number of customers turning to stablecoins after card payments fail.
“We are seeing people whose cards are declined switch to stablecoins,” he said.
Stripe’s approach is not to replace fiat money, but to abstract the difference. Over time, Duchâteau said, users should not need to know whether a transaction is executed on traditional rails or blockchain.
Stripe’s ambition, he said, is to become “AWS for money,” routing and orchestrating money movements across systems, similar to how cloud platforms manage computing resources globally.
That includes future products beyond payments, such as offering yield or access to capital in markets where Stripe has had limited reach before. Duchâteau pointed to emerging countries like Argentina as an example, where stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) could enable services that are difficult to provide through traditional banking.
“The technology didn’t exist before. Now we’ve reached a point where we can actually do it,” he said. “We are very excited and we are doubling down.”
