Stripe, the United States-based fintech giant, has significantly ramped up its crypto initiatives after it launched a service that enables payments for NFTs and digital assets via fiat currency.
It has been reported that businesses can use Stripe’s new application programming interfaces (APIs) to accept fiat payments for crypto, provide digital wallets, payout users in fiat, leverage identity, and Know Your Customer (KYC) solutions and utilize data to detect and block fraudulent transactions.
John Collinson, the co-founder of Stripe, shared an announcement on March 11, and the firm also partnered with FTX, FTX US, Blockchain.com, Nifty Gateway, and Just Mining to launch the crypto business suite.
He said:
“Stripe now supports crypto businesses: exchanges, on-ramps, wallets, and NFT marketplaces. Not just pay-ins but payouts, KYC and identity verification, fraud prevention, and lots more.”
Tristan Yver, the Head of Strategy at FTX, emphasized that the deal will help the firm attract a broader mainstream audience by making it more straightforward for users to purchase crypto assets.
Yver said:
“The optimizations we made in our payments setup with Stripe deliver the smooth on-ramp experience FTX’s growing customer base demands. We’re able to multiply revenue by making it easier than ever for people to invest in crypto.”
However, as part of the move, Stripe also launched an open drop of NFT collectibles dubbed “Cube Thingies” via Nifty Gateway. The NFTs cost between $242.42 and $424.24 each to mint and all proceeds from the sale will go to nonprofit healthcare tech organization Watsi.
The report said that Stripe initially rolled out Bitcoin (BTC) support back in 2014 but reversed the decision four years later due to the network’s slow transaction speeds and fees at the time.
Thus, the firm did also state that it would re-enter the sector once crypto payments became more viable and the firm has been progressively getting back into the crypto sector since late 2021. In October, Stripe was building a team to enable crypto payments for its users.
Source: Cointelegraph