Stripe is launching stablecoin-funded accounts in more than 100 countries

The stablecoin-funded accounts will help Stripe facilitate cross-border transactions between businesses, regardless of where they are located.

Stripe is launching stablecoin-funded accounts in more than 100 countries, allowing merchants to hold funds and pay vendors internationally using Circle Internet Group's US dollar-tracking token USDC as well as the USDB stablecoin issued by the company's Bridge unit.

The move, announced at Stripe's inaugural developer conference on Wednesday, expands the company's global footprint and comes as it pivots to become its own financial ecosystem where companies can easily pay each other within its network and do tasks like scheduling together.

The stablecoin-funded accounts will help Stripe facilitate cross-border transactions between businesses, regardless of where they are located. The accounts also support balances held in British pounds, euros and US dollars.

"Businesses in those 101 countries will be able to operate entirely in US dollars," said William Gaybrick, president of product and business at Stripe. "So much of the world is subject to unstable currencies and unreliable types of infrastructure and that caps the GDP of the Internet. Now these users in Argentina, Vietnam and everywhere in between can hold stablecoins, receive and send funds on both crypto and fiat rails."

The new offering marks the latest effort by a financial technology company to incorporate stablecoins – cryptocurrencies that typically track the US dollar or another currency – as a form of payment in business transactions, rather than being used solely among traders in crypto markets.

The accounts are supported by Bridge, the stablecoin orchestration platform Stripe acquired last year for $1.1 billion, and will expand the company's global footprint. Previously, Stripe accounts were only available in 50 countries.

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In an effort to support Stripe's ecosystem transformation, the company also announced a profiles feature to help businesses find each other and verify their identities.

Stripe also launched a tool to make it easy for developers to embed artificial intelligence (AI) agents capable of making purchases on users' behalf into their products. A productivity app, for example, could make a task on a to-do list shoppable, Gaybrick said.

In addition to launching its own product, Stripe is the exclusive payments partner for card network Visa's AI agents, Gaybrick added.

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"These are the twin revolutions in intelligence and money," he said. "AI, of course, is already transforming how we work and live, and stablecoins are the first truly global, actually usable, fully programmable money that we have never had." BLOOMBERG