Global payments giant Stripe is building what it calls “AWS for money,” and crypto technology is at the center of that plan.
Speaking at the RWA Summit in Cannes, France, Adrien Duchâteau, head of cryptocurrency marketing at Stripe, said the company is now integrating stablecoins and blockchain into its core payments stack, with the aim of modernizing the way money moves globally.
“We’re putting more of our stack on the line, product by product,” he said.
The move builds on the company’s long, if spotty, history in crypto. Stripe was one of the first major tech companies to adopt Bitcoin allowing BTC payments as early as 2014 before rolling back in 2018 because volatility made it impractical for merchants, Duchâteau said. The company returned in 2021 with a dedicated crypto team, betting that the underlying technology was mature enough to support real-world use, he added.
Speed up payments with stablecoins
The company’s blockchain ambition focuses on solving a central problem: global payments remain slow and expensive. Cross-border transfers, Duchâteau explained, still rely on systems like SWIFT, which can take days to settle. For platforms paying creators or entrepreneurs, this deadline often dictates payment schedules.
Stripe processes nearly $2 trillion in annual payments, or approximately 2% of global GDP, and serves more than 5 million businesses worldwide. So even incremental regulatory improvements could have far-reaching effects, he said.
“We operate on T+3 networks,” he explained, meaning a transaction often takes three days from payment to settlement. “If you take that number down to zero, that’s a huge change.”
To achieve this vision, Stripe acquired stable infrastructure company Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2024, then purchased crypto wallet provider Privy. It also partnered with crypto investment firm Paradigm to develop a payments-focused blockchain called Tempo, which went live last month with infrastructure partners including Mastercard, UBS, Klarna and Visa.
The company is already rolling out stablecoin features. Merchants can accept stablecoins at checkout, including through Shopify, while platforms like Remote.com allow users to receive payments in crypto. Through Bridge, it also helps fintechs like Klarna and Slash issue and integrate stablecoins into their operations.
Where banking rails fail
Demand arises where traditional systems are not enough. Duchâteau pointed out that users in emerging markets are seeking exposure to the dollar, as well as a growing number of customers turning to stablecoins after card payments failed.
“We are seeing people whose cards have been declined moving to stablecoins,” he said.
Stripe’s approach is not to replace fiat, but to abstract the difference. Over time, Duchâteau said, users should no longer need to know whether a transaction is taking place on traditional or blockchain rails.
Stripe’s ambition, he said, is to become “AWS for money”, routing and orchestrating the movement of money between systems, in the same way that cloud platforms manage computing resources on a global scale.
This includes future products beyond payments, such as offering yield or access to capital in markets where Stripe previously had limited reach. Duchâteau cited emerging countries like Argentina as an example, where stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) could enable services that are difficult to provide through traditional banking.
“The technology didn’t exist before. We’re now at a point where we can actually make it happen,” he said. “We’re super excited and we’re doubling down.”
