Financial technology giant Stripe will reintroduce payments with cryptocurrencies. This service will initially only be available for Circle’s USDC fixedcoin and will be available on the Solana, Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. The move marks the company’s return after discontinuing support for Bitcoin during the first “crypto winter” in 2018.

Stripe, which stepped into the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2014, completely cut off its support for cryptocurrency payments four years later, citing Bitcoin’s extreme volatility and inability to function as a medium of exchange. At the time, Bitcoin’s slow transaction speeds and increasing fees were also among Stripe’s criticisms. Bitcoin, which experienced a sharp decline from its peak in 2017 at the end of the year, confirmed this situation.

Although Stripe, which ended Bitcoin support, attempted to re-enter the cryptocurrency markets as one of the founding partners of Facebook’s Libra project the following year, it withdrew from the project in the same year and Libra could not be implemented. Stripe has continued its interest in cryptocurrencies by launching a project aimed at facilitating fiat-crypto payments in 2022.

Stripe’s co-founder and President, John Collison, drew attention to the increasing use of cryptocurrencies in his opening speech at the Global Internet Economy conference held on Thursday. “Cryptocurrencies provide a real benefit. With the increase in transaction speeds and the decrease in costs, we see cryptocurrencies finally making sense as a medium of exchange,” Collison said. said.

While Stripe initially offered USDC support, it announced that payments can be made via Solana (SOL), Ethereum (ETH) and Polygon (MATIC) blockchains. The company currently has a value of $65 billion and is one of the world’s largest payment providers, reaching a transaction volume of over $1 trillion by 2023.

This development can be considered as part of the efforts for cryptocurrencies to become increasingly widespread and to be integrated into the traditional financial structure. The return of payment giants such as Stripe to cryptocurrencies may contribute to increasing trust in this area and accelerating the adoption of cryptocurrencies.

However, there are still some points to pay attention to. Although USDC is a fixedcoin backed 1:1 to the US dollar, eliminating the risk of high volatility in other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, questions remain regarding the regulation and security of cryptocurrencies. It is not yet known whether Stripe will expand its payment services with cryptocurrencies and include other cryptocurrencies into the system.

The steps Stripe will take in the coming period and the integration process of cryptocurrencies into payment systems are worth following closely. These developments have an important place in terms of the future of financial technologies and the role of cryptocurrencies in the global economy.