Payments giant Stripe is preparing a massive global expansion for its stablecoin card business, aiming to roll out programs to more than 100 countries by the end of the year. The move highlights Stripe’s growing conviction that digital dollars are evolving from niche crypto trading assets into everyday alternatives to traditional fiat currency for global consumer and corporate payments.
Henri Stern, co-founder of crypto wallet firm Privy who now leads stablecoins and crypto at Stripe following Privy’s acquisition, confirmed the ambitious expansion plans. Current clients leveraging Stripe’s stablecoin card infrastructure include major crypto exchange Kraken, corporate spend management platform Ramp, and payments app Morse, CoinDesk reported.
The expansion targets a rapidly accelerating sector within the digital dollar ecosystem. According to data from Paymentscan, monthly stablecoin card spending reached approximately $1.2 billion recently—a threefold increase compared to the previous year. While this figure remains a small fraction of the broader global card processing industry, it signals an expanding appetite among businesses to bypass traditional banking friction for everyday transactions.
Stripe’s strategic push integrates its existing card-issuing network — which has processed hundreds of billions of dollars across more than 400 million cards issued since 2018 — with Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm it acquired for $1.1 billion in 2024. For corporate clients like Ramp, issuing stablecoin cards allows rapid international scale without building custom banking partnerships market by market, while platforms like Kraken can enable users to spend directly from their existing digital asset balances.
Beyond card issuance, Stripe is steadily constructing a comprehensive blockchain payments stack, including a partnership with Paradigm to develop the Tempo blockchain and backing Open Standard’s new Open USD stablecoin. Despite assembling these interconnected technologies, Stern emphasized that Stripe remains agnostic regarding specific blockchains and stablecoins, aiming to offer modular tools that integrate smoothly alongside standard fiat payment rails. Looking ahead, Stripe is also exploring tokenized bank deposits and decentralized finance applications, though stablecoins remain the immediate core focus of its crypto development.
