Stripe CEO Explains Why Stablecoins Are Winning Over Global Businesses

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison mentioned stablecoins are gaining adoption as a result of they provide companies quicker, cheaper and extra dependable funds than conventional techniques.

His remarks got here in a Hacker News thread on Sept. 5, 2025, at some point after Stripe and Paradigm launched Tempo, a blockchain designed particularly for stablecoin funds.

In his first touch upon the Tempo announcement thread, Collison wrote that Stripe had been “disappointed with crypto’s payments utility for much of the past decade.” He mentioned the corporate’s view shifted as extra companies started utilizing stablecoins for routine monetary exercise.

Collison pointed to Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure supplier Stripe acquired in October 2024. He mentioned SpaceX makes use of it to handle cash flows in hard-to-reach markets, Latin American fintech DolarApp depends on it for banking providers, and an Argentinian bike importer makes use of Stripe’s dashboard to pay suppliers.

“These businesses are not using crypto because it’s crypto or for speculative benefit,” Collison wrote. “They’re performing real-world financial activity, and they’ve found that crypto (via stablecoins) is easier, faster, better than the status quo.”

When requested whether or not folks will finally “pay with Tempo,” Collison mentioned the blockchain is meant to operate behind the scenes. He in contrast it to monetary messaging techniques like SWIFT or ACH, noting that buyers might not work together with Tempo straight however would profit from its effectivity. He known as “decentralized, internet-scale SWIFT” an imperfect however helpful analogy.

In the reply to a different query (about why companies discover crypto funds interesting), Collison outlined 5 causes corporations choose stablecoins: near-instant settlement that reduces trapped liquidity, decrease prices than card funds, higher reliability in cross-border transfers, fewer foreign money conversions and direct on-chain entry to U.S. {dollars}.

He additionally rejected the concept that adoption is principally regulatory arbitrage. Collison mentioned stablecoins are actually explicitly regulated within the United States beneath the GENIUS Act and in Europe beneath MiCA, and argued their attraction lies in fixing the frictions of high-volume cash motion.

In the Thursday announcement, Tempo was ndescribed as a “payments-first” blockchain constructed from the bottom up for stablecoins, combining Stripe’s international funds expertise with Paradigm’s crypto analysis. The corporations mentioned they launched the community to supply infrastructure tailor-made to real-world fee wants as stablecoins transfer into mainstream use.

Tempo’s design emphasizes predictable low charges, optionally available privateness and the power to pay each transactions and fuel prices in any stablecoin. It features a devoted funds lane with options akin to memos and entry lists, and is EVM-compatible, operating on the Reth consumer. Stripe and Paradigm mentioned the blockchain is engineered to course of greater than 100,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality.

The community is geared toward supporting international payouts and payroll, remittances, tokenized deposits that may settle across the clock, embedded monetary accounts, microtransactions and what the businesses name “agentic payments.”

Stripe and Paradigm additionally burdened governance. They mentioned Tempo will function as a impartial platform for stablecoins, secured by an unbiased and numerous validator set, with a roadmap towards absolutely permissionless validation.

The venture launched with a broad roster of design companions, together with Visa, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, Nubank, Revolut, Shopify, OpenAI, Anthropic, Coupang, DoorDash, Lead Bank and Mercury.