TechCrunch
Payments company Stripe announced it’s building out a new crypto team to help build out the “future of Web3 payments,” according to public statements posted to Twitter on Tuesday. Stripe, which had once been among the first to support Bitcoin payments before leaving the market a few years ago, has been watching for the right time to get back in. But how those plans will play out is still largely unknown.
Reached for comment, Stripe declined to share any additional insights or details about its strategy, pointing only to its new public statements and its earlier blog post.
In January 2018, Stripe had announced it was ending support for Bitcoin payments that April, saying that the cryptocurrency had become less useful for payments for a variety of reasons.
The company noted then that transaction confirmation times had risen, leading to increased failure rates, and fees had also grown substantially. However, Stripe said then that it still remained “very optimistic” about cryptocurrencies overall and particularly projects like Lightning and others that could enable faster payments. It also referenced other developments like OmiseGO and said there were a number of high-potential projects based on Ethereum in the works, as well.
Now, after sitting on the sidelines for years, Stripe is reentering the crypto space.
