Today, Bloomberg reported, citing sources, that payments company Stripe is in talks to acquire B2B stablecoin technology company Bridge. When we recently wrote about Stripe resuming accepting stablecoins for merchants, as one of the companies building the infrastructure to enable the use of stablecoins for mainstream payments You mentioned Bridge.
The company officially launched in August after two and a half years of development and raised $58 million in funding from Sequoia, Ribbit, Index, Haun Ventures and others.
Until now, stablecoins have been primarily used in the cryptocurrency world and by people living in regions with unstable local currencies. Some people sometimes use it for cross-border payments, but until recently it hasn’t been a user-friendly experience.
That’s changing in two ways. On the consumer side, apps much like PayPal and Venmo are emerging with stablecoins supporting cross-border money transfers behind the scenes. On the business side, new APIs support payments. For example, cryptocurrency exchange Bitso uses Bridge’s API to offer MXN-USD payment rails to Mexican businesses.
In some ways, Bridge is a perfect match for Stripe. Both companies are essentially B2B2C. In other words, it provides businesses with the infrastructure to support both business and consumer payments. Both are ultimately global payments orchestrators. Stripe for card and bank payments, Bridge for stablecoins.
SpaceX uses Bridge for global financial management. Bridge provides on-ramps and off-ramps between fiat currencies and stablecoins around the world, including providing FX conversion to dollar stablecoins. This allows stablecoins to be used for instant cross-border payments.
Bridge founders
Bridge co-founder and CEO Zach Abrams previously co-founded P2P payment app Evenly with Sean Yu, which they sold to Square. Abrams then worked at Square for several years until 2015. He then served as Head of Consumer Products at Coinbase for two years until July 2019 and as Chief Product Officer at Brex before reconnecting with Yu for Bridge.
In acquisitions, outsiders tend to focus on compensation. But for the founders, the company is their creation. The sale to Stripe provides an opportunity to accelerate mainstream deployment of stablecoins much more quickly than an independent company.
Ledger Insights Research has released a report on bank-issued stablecoins and tokenized deposits featuring over 70 projects. Click here for more information.
