Stablecoins, or digital versions of fiat money, are increasingly viewed as an alternative for cross-border payments with Facebook parent Meta said to be the latest to explore developing its own token.
It may be “crypto winter,” but it’s a “stablecoin summer” as digital dollar adoption booms, payments giant Stripe said Tuesday in its annual letter.
Bridge, the stablecoin orchestration platform Stripe acquired in 2024, saw transaction volume more than quadruple last year, according to the letter.
The firm also said it will “soon” launch the mainnet of Tempo, the payments-focused blockchain it is developing with crypto firm Paradigm and started testing in December.
Stripe has increasingly focused on bringing crypto technology to its payment network, seeing stablecoins as an alternative for cross-border transfers and programmable payments. Stablecoins are a $300 billion class of cryptocurrencies tied to fiat money like the U.S. dollar that use blockchains for faster, cheaper settlement.
Their utility has led to stablecoins decoupling from crypto market cycles, the payment firm wrote. While bitcoin fell 50% from its October peak, and lost 6% over 2025, stablecoin payment volume doubled to about $400 billion, with around 60% resulting from business-to-business transactions, it said, citing a recent report by McKinsey and Artemis.
“Stablecoin payments are advancing quietly and inexorably as real-world uptake continues apace,” the firm wrote in the letter.
Highlighting the rising stablecoin demand, Meta (META), the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp plans to launch its own stablecoin later this year with an outside partner, CoinDesk reported on Tuesday.
Stripe said businesses processed $1.9 trillion on its platform last year, up 34% from 2024. The company also announced a tender offer valuing it at $159 billion.
