Shopify merchants can now accept USDC stablecoin payments directly through Shopify Payments and Shop Pay, as the e-commerce giant launches its most comprehensive crypto integration to date in partnership with Coinbase and Stripe.
The rollout begins with early access today and will expand to millions of merchants across 34 countries throughout 2025. It will enable seamless crypto transactions through the new Commerce Payment Protocol built on Coinbase’s Base blockchain.
Stripe’s integration ensures merchants receive settlements in their preferred local currency or USDC directly to external wallets, eliminating the complexity traditionally associated with cryptocurrency transactions.
Base Payment Protocol Set to Address Commerce Complexities
The system supports full e-commerce functionality, including authorization, capture, and refunds, operating as seamlessly as conventional payment methods.
Merchants benefit from ridiculously reduced transaction fees, typically under $0.01 on Base compared to traditional payment networks, while accessing faster settlement times that can reach 200 milliseconds even across international borders.
The timing proves strategic as stablecoin adoption is accelerating globally. In fact, monthly stablecoin transaction volumes have surged from under $2 billion in 2019 to over $700 billion in 2025.
Source: VisaOnchainAnalyticsMajor corporations, including Visa, PayPal, JPMorgan, and Deutsche Bank, now actively build stablecoin infrastructure, while tech giants like Apple, X, Airbnb, and Meta explore similar integrations.
Notably, Coinbase’s newly launched Commerce Payment Protocol solves fundamental problems that have prevented widespread crypto adoption in retail environments.
Traditional blockchain payments operate as simple peer-to-peer transfers, but commercial transactions require sophisticated multi-stage processes involving inventory management, tax calculations, and potential cancellations between checkout and fulfillment.
Source: BaseThe protocol introduces an innovative escrow architecture that implements authorization and capture functionality similar to traditional credit card processing.
When customers make purchases, funds move into smart contract escrow during authorization and then transfer to merchants during capture. This provides protection for both parties while maintaining crypto’s core advantages of speed, low costs, and global accessibility.
The protocol prevents operators from modifying payment intents through cryptographic hashing and signing mechanisms. It also has automatic fund reclaim capabilities to ensure customers never lose money due to operator malfunctions.
Source: BaseOperators facilitate transactions without requiring customers to pay blockchain fees, maintaining the user experience expectations established by traditional payment systems.
The protocol is composable, enabling integration with existing commerce workflows while supporting advanced features like partial captures for multi-delivery orders and programmable payment instructions that can trigger additional financial ecosystem actions.
Strategic Global Expansions, Crypto is Going Mainstream
Shopify’s crypto integration coincides with Stripe’s aggressive expansion into digital asset infrastructure, including the recent acquisition of crypto wallet startup Privy following its blockbuster $1.1 billion purchase of stablecoin platform Bridge.
These moves position Stripe to offer comprehensive end-to-end crypto solutions through unified platforms, spanning wallet creation, stablecoin payments, and traditional fiat integration.
Merchants automatically receive stablecoin payment capabilities unless they manually disable the feature. Incentives for merchants include up to 0.5% cash back on USDC transactions and planned customer rewards later this year.
Institutional momentum also supports this growing adoption, with stablecoins settling $27.6 trillion in first-quarter 2025 transactions alone, doubling Visa’s 2023 settlement volume.
Over 60% of Fortune 500 companies now actively develop blockchain technology, while nearly one in five executives consider on-chain initiatives key strategic priorities, representing a 47% growth from the previous year.
As the trend grows, the integration’s global scope across 34 countries immediately exposes millions of merchants to borderless payment capabilities through crypto.
As Jesse Pollak, head of Coinbase’s blockchain and wallet divisions, predicted, other payment processors will likely scramble to match Shopify’s crypto integration, as this might just be the beginning of “real-world crypto adoption.”
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