Stripe Explores Bank Partnerships on Stablecoins as Payments Importance Grows: CEO John Collison

Payments firm Stripe held early discussions with banks about integrating stablecoins into their core service as digital tokens are gaining traction for global payments, co-founder and president John Collison said in an interview with Bloomberg.

“Banks are very interested in how they should be integrated with stablecoins into their product offerings as well,” said Collison. “This is not something that banks are just kind of brushing away or treating as a fad.”

His comments underscore the rising interest among traditional financial firms to explore stablecoins, one of the fastest-growing use cases of crypto. Stablecoins, which have become a $240 billion asset class, are blockchain-based tokens anchored to government-issued currencies, predominantly to the U.S. dollar. They offer cheaper, faster alternative with around-the clock settlements compared to traditional payments channels.

PayPal (PYPL) launched its own U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin PYUSD, while French bank Societe Generale issued a euro-backed token EURCV. Visa developed a tokenization platform to help banks issue stablecoins.

Stripe is also betting on the growing role of stablecoins in international payments.

The firm made headlines earlier this year by acquiring stablecoin tech startup Bridge for $1.1 billion. Since then, Bridge rolled out its own stablecoin USDB while Stripe introduced stablecoin accounts in over 100 countries.

“A lot of our future payment volume is going to be in stablecoins,” Collison said in the interview.

He pointed to costly FX fees and multi-day processing times as pain points that stablecoins could address.

Read more: Tether, Tron Dominate Fast-Growing Stablecoin Payments Arena, Survey Shows