After three years, payment giant Stripe embraces cryptocurrency again

Financial services company Stripe is once again embracing the world of crypto. Today, the global payments giant launched a crypto service that enables businesses to use Stripe as a payment method for crypto and NFT transactions.

Stripe terminated its service that allowed users to pay with Bitcoin back in 2018. The company announced in October last year that it had hired a team to develop Web3 payment services, and now the company is returning to cryptocurrency.

The company’s co-founder John Collison announced the news on Twitter on Thursday, sharing a number of different ways Stripe plans to support Web3 companies through its crypto API, which is the interface that companies use to connect to the Stripe platform.

Currently, Stripe’s crypto services are only available to businesses in the U.S., U.K., and EU. Its marketplace-based NFT services are supported in those regions as well as Japan.

To boost its Web3 services, Stripe announced that it has reached agreements with FTX, FTX US, Nifty Gateway, Just Mining, and Blockchain.com. FTX and FTX US announced that they have signed agreements with Stripe for payment and KYC services.

As part of today’s announcement, the company also launched its own line of NFTs, called Cube Thingies, with proceeds going to healthcare nonprofit Watsi. NFTs are unique blockchain-based tokens that can be used to represent ownership of digital assets, such as artworks.

In addition, FTX will use Stripe Radar to reduce the risk of fraud. Radar is fully integrated with the rest of Stripe and uses machine learning models and signals (including customer details and billing information) to distinguish between fraudsters and legitimate customers. This enables FTX to accept as many legitimate transactions as possible, thereby promoting compliance on the exchange.

FTX and FTX US will provide users with registration and identity verification processes through Stripe, and provide payment support for users who add funds to FTX accounts. Stripe said its goal is to make the process of opening and funding FTX accounts a more "seamless" experience for users.

“The improvements we’ve made in our payments setup with Stripe provide a frictionless onboarding experience that meets the needs of FTX’s growing customer base,” said Tristan Yver, head of strategy at FTX.US.

FTX.US President Brett Harrison said the company has seen faster KYC processing, higher auto-approval rates, and overall improvements in customer user experience.

John Collison said in a tweet on Thursday that the company now supports crypto businesses including exchanges, on-ramps, wallets, and NFT marketplaces.