Stripe has officially opened the door for consumers to pay for AI subscriptions, SaaS tools, and creator content using stablecoins.
The payment giant revealed in an October 14 blog post that businesses can now receive recurring payments in stablecoins across major blockchains, with the feature currently in private preview for US-based businesses.
“We currently support subscription payments made in USDC over the Base and Polygon blockchains,” the official post said.
Jennifer Lee, Product Manager on the newly formed Stripe Crypto team, demoed the integration, showing how users can see the crypto option alongside Card and U.S. bank options on Stripe checkout.
Users can connect popular wallets like MetaMask, Phantom, Coinbase Wallet, and Trust Wallet to directly pay with Circle’s USDC stablecoin.
Stripe Stablecoin Smart Contracts Eliminate Manual Transaction Signing
To enable stablecoin subscriptions, Stripe built a smart contract that resolves a fundamental limitation around wallet owners typically needing to manually “sign” each transaction.
The smart contract lets customers save their wallet as a payment method and authorize recurring payments, without needing to re-sign each transaction. This works with more than 400 supported wallets.
Since launching stablecoin payments a year ago, Stripe has seen them enable rapid global expansion for fast-growing companies.
The top 20 AI companies on Stripe draw 60% of their revenue from outside the country, but cross-border payments can be expensive, slow to settle, and often fail outright.
Source: HelplamaWhy AI Companies Are Shifting 20% of Payments to Stablecoins
AI companies like Shadeform report that approximately 20% of their payment volume comes from stablecoins, which settle near-instantaneously and cost half as much per transaction to process.
This prompted Stripe to launch subscription capabilities for the 30% of businesses on its platform with recurring business models.
The stablecoin subscription feature is compatible with Elements, Checkout, the Payment Intents API, and Payment Links, and also supports one-off payments.
However, it limits transactions to $10,000 per transaction and $100,000 per month, restricting large-scale applications.
Alex Mashrabov, CEO of Higgsfield AI, said, “Stablecoin payments via Stripe help us reduce our cost of revenue for payments from all around the globe, attract more tech-forward users, and reach folks who don’t have access to other payment methods.”
Similarly, on September 30, Stripe launched Open Issuance, a platform from its subsidiary Bridge that allows businesses to create and manage their own stablecoins.
Major Stablecoin Initiatives by Stripe and Leading Payment Platforms
With Open Issuance, companies can mint and burn tokens without restrictions, customize reserve structures, and earn rewards on their holdings.
Zach Abrams, Co-founder and CEO of Bridge, believes businesses based on money transfer should invest in stablecoins, with Open Issuance helping them build on top of stablecoins they control and customize.
In early September, Stripe also launched Tempo, a payments-focused Layer 1 blockchain designed for high-throughput stablecoin transactions, with Visa, Deutsche Bank, and Standard Chartered as initial design partners.
Tempo addresses infrastructure limitations as existing blockchains process between 5 and 1,000 transactions per second, while Stripe handles peaks exceeding 10,000 TPS.
The blockchain features fiat-denominated fees rather than blockchain-specific tokens, with users paying gas fees in any stablecoin through an automated market maker system.
Stripe CEO: Stablecoins Will Force Banks to Raise 0.40% Deposit Rates
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison believes that the growing popularity of stablecoins will eventually force banks to raise deposit yields or risk losing customers.
Responding to venture capitalist Nic Carter on X, Collison said depositors “are going to, and should, earn something closer to a market return on their capital.”
Citing savings account yields of just 0.40% in the US and 0.25% in the EU, Collison argued that banks have relied too heavily on cheap deposits. “Cheap deposits are great, but being so consumer-hostile feels to me like a losing position,” he added.
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