Payments giant Stripe is pushing crypto closer to mainstream business by letting US companies accept stablecoin subscriptions in USDC on Base and Polygon wallets, settled automatically in fiat.
The feature is aimed at the 30% of Stripe clients that rely on subscriptions and recurring revenue, letting customers pay with crypto while businesses manage both fiat and crypto in one dashboard, the company said in an Oct. 14 blog post.
Stripe said the stablecoin service, initially available only in private preview, makes it faster, cheaper, and more reliable for startups to receive payments from international customers.
The move could accelerate everyday crypto adoption while pressuring traditional payment processors.
“Stablecoins have served as a critical tool for the rapid global expansion of some of the fastest-growing companies today,” Stripe said.
USDC is currently the second-largest stablecoin with a market capitalization of $76.26 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Stripe Aims To Capitalize On “Rapid Global Expansion” Of Startups
The payments giant said that the top 20 AI companies on Stripe, 19 of which are based in the US, draw 60% of their revenue from outside of the country.
But cross-border transactions are “expensive to accept, slow to settle, and often fail outright,” Stripe said.
It said that’s a key reason why firms are starting to transition to stablecoin payments, noting that AI company Shadeform has seen approximately 20% of its payment volume shift to stablecoins.
One of the obstacles to enabling recurring payments on the blockchain is the fact that the wallet owner has to manually “sign” each transaction, but Stripe said it has addressed this limitation with a new innovative smart contract.
It lets users save their wallet as a payment method and authorize it to send payments without the need to re-sign each transaction. Customers will be able to do that with over 400 supported wallets.
Stripe Moves Into Stablecoins After GENIUS Act Gives Regulatory Clarity
In October last year, Stripe acquired the stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge in a $1.1 billion deal to integrate blockchain-based payments into its global merchant network.
Bridge recently filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to organize a national trust bank.
The proposed Bridge National Trust Bank would enable Stripe to issue, redeem, and custody stablecoins within a federally regulated framework.
According to Bridge co-founder Zack Abrams, the national charter would enable Bridge “to tokenize trillions of dollars” if approved.
Today, @Stablecoin submitted its application for organizing a national trust bank to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The charter would allow Bridge to operate under a unified federal framework consistent with the GENIUS Act.
Through this bank, we'll provide:…
— Zach (@zcabrams) October 14, 2025
The application for a national charter also comes after US President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law in July this year. The Act establishes a federal regulatory framework for “payments stablecoins” in the US, giving long-awaited regulatory clarity.
That has led to a boom in the stablecoin market, with the sector’s capitalization recently soaring past the $300 billion mark.
Data from DefiLlama shows that the stablecoin market cap stands at around $306.315 billion after seeing $2.25 billion in growth over the past seven days.
Stripe’s move to apply for OCC oversight is the latest in a series of similar moves made by crypto firms looking to obtain their own national charters.
The same month that the GENIUS Act was signed into law, USDC issuer Circle filed for a national trust license to oversee reserves for its stablecoin under OCC oversight.
Shortly thereafter, XRP parent company Ripple, which launched its RLUSD stablecoin in December 2024, joined the queue with its own OCC charter for both federal and state oversight.
Paxos then followed a month later. Earlier this month, US crypto exchange Coinbase also announced that it had applied for a National Trust Company Charter.