Unpacking Stripe’s Vision on Stablecoins

With Stripe's President of Product and Business

By now you have probably heard multiple times already that Stripe’s mission is to increase the GDP of the internet. But what does that actually mean? According to the quantity theory of money, nominal GDP (PY) equals the money supply (M) times the velocity of money (V). Boosting the velocity of money thereby increases economic activity. Stripe has done this by helping developers improve digital payment acceptance. But as Will Gaybrick explained in his interview with Simon Taylor, these efforts have been like giving vitamins: helpful, but not essential. In contrast, Bridge is building the medicine: core infrastructure that solves fundamental problems developers cannot ignore.

In the existing system, developers are limited by closed bank infrastructures they cannot access. Building on top of these systems means navigating outdated code, fragmented standards, and manual workarounds. Worse, these inconsistencies vary by institution and country, making integration a painful, error-prone process. When money needs to move across borders, developers face geopolitical hurdles that slow transactions, increase costs, and reduce reliability. In contracts, stablecoins operate as a platform without borders above existing payment systems and give developers the ability to program money directly. Imagine a freelance contract where payments are automatically released upon completing specific, verifiable milestones. Or an e-commerce platform that instantly splits a sale between suppliers and logistics partners. This unlocks entirely new business models like pay-per-view content, real-time streaming royalties, or tipping economies for creators. Programmable money can also include built-in security features, such as multi-signature requirements or time-locks, offering powerful tools to reduce fraud and increase trust in digital transactions. This dramatically reshapes the payment value chain. Functions like fraud mitigation, dispute resolution, regulatory compliance, and bank integration can each be modularized and competed over so value accrues to the part of the stack that delivers the most utility. If, for example, Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) are missing onchain, any developer can build them. This is where public, permissionless protocols overcome political gridlock by creating shared infrastructure.

As Tom Noyes wrote here and here, given Stripe’s scale, processing $1.4 trillion in 2024 and serving half the Fortune 100, it may seem counterintuitive to promote stablecoins that could undercut its core card-based revenue. But Stripe is not aiming to replace cards; it is expanding the use cases that traditional rails cannot serve. From cross-border B2B payouts to treasury solutions in volatile economies, stablecoins offer programmable, global infrastructure. Meanwhile, consumers can still transact with cards linked to stablecoin balances, thanks to partnerships like Visa. This hybrid model preserves Stripe’s card revenue while unlocking entirely new business models powered by programmable money. This unlocks a new economy (PY) for Stripe to address, one that was previously out of reach. Traditionally, treasury operations involved slow foreign exchange, fragmented liquidity, and complex account structures. With stablecoins, enterprises can create onchain wallets per entity and route funds instantly, like pressing a “teleport” button for liquidity. While the legal definition of wallet ownership is still evolving, the operational logic is clear. Stripe’s ability to offer USD balances in over 100 countries would have otherwise taken years using existing infrastructure.

The explosive growth of stablecoins reflects a rising demand in emerging economies for a stable form of money. Stripe has already been grappling with questions such as whether to display the coin, the chain, or simply show dollars. Looking toward the 2030 Stripe Sessions, Will envisions a world with 200 payment methods and 200 stablecoins, an outcome they are actively trying to avoid. At what point is it a dollar, and when is it just a coin that represents one? Asking consumers and businesses to evaluate the credit risk and utility of each issuer introduces unnecessary confusion. It also echoes the Bank for International Settlements' key concerns about the singleness of money. The issue with the current regulatory approach is that stablecoins are still viewed primarily as crypto-assets, rather than as a new form factor of fiat currency. In reality, stablecoin transactions involve the movement of assets, but the absence of a framework for transferring the underlying liabilities of each stablecoin between banks and fintech’s creates challenges for the singleness of money. Holders must ask themselves whether they can trust issuers like Circle or Tether not to default.

Will mentions that if you hold money on someone else’s behalf, it probably makes sense to issue a stablecoin because it improves your product and allows you to capture the shift from traditional accounts into wallets. The question was raised of why euro-denominated stablecoins have struggled to gain traction. Will suspects this is because the debt underlying a stablecoin in Europe is not mutualized which could be solved through the adoption of a wholesale CBDC. According to Blockstories, Societe Générale’s euro stablecoin for example has struggled to gain traction due to internal resistance, with concerns about limited visibility into token holders hindering its rollout on DeFi protocols. However, the immediate solution may lie in promoting stablecoin acceptance. The ongoing discussion around the digital euro aims to solve the issue of acceptance by granting it legal tender status, yet the ECB deliberately excludes public permissionless blockchains and programmability from its design. From Will’s perspective, these currencies should exist onchain to be more performant, faster, cheaper, and available 24/7.

While Stripe is currently focused on boosting the GDP through unexplored economies by experimenting with stablecoin infrastructure, the lessons it gathers abroad may soon circle back to domestic economies. The ability to program money, automate financial flows, and move value instantly across borders has the potential to increase the velocity of money not only in frontier economies, but also in domestic ones where Stripe already has deep reach. With the GENIUS Act now signed into law, the number of stablecoin issuers is expected to rise dramatically. This surge in issuance and experimentation could push the total market capitalization of stablecoins past the three trillion dollar mark before 2030. However, with growth comes risk. As more issuers enter the market, the question of how to preserve the singleness of money will become increasingly urgent for regulators and market participants alike.

If you’re interested in learning more about stablecoins, please check out our library of articles on the intersection of stablecoins and banking!