Stripe

Stripe is the online payments company run by Patrick and John Collison. Its crypto tools let a business take, send and hold digital dollars (stablecoins) from the same Stripe account it uses for cards. Solana is one of the main networks. A customer pays in USDC from a Solana wallet, and the shop gets US dollars in its Stripe balance. Stripe takes a flat 1.5% fee. Stripe has no crypto token of its own. It also now backs OUSD, a new stablecoin from its Bridge unit that went live on Solana in September 2026.

How Stripe crypto payments work on Solana

A Stripe stablecoin payment is a normal checkout with a crypto button. When the customer picks it, Stripe sends them to crypto.stripe.com. They pick a coin and a network, such as USDC on Solana, link their wallet and approve the payment. Stripe swaps the coins for cash and pays the shop in its own currency. The business never holds crypto unless it wants to.

The shop turns the option on in its Stripe Dashboard. It then shows up in Checkout, Payment Links and invoices with no extra crypto setup. Stripe's stablecoin payments guide says buyers can pay from almost any country. Only businesses in supported countries can take the payments.

Solana has been in the product from the start. When Stripe brought crypto back in 2024, it launched with USDC on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon, The Block reported. At Stripe Sessions in April 2024, John Collison demoed the flow by sending USDC from a Phantom CASH$1.000+0.0% wallet on Solana.

Stripe stablecoin payments: supported tokens, networks and fees

Stripe accepts three stablecoins. USDC works on Tempo, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Base. USDP works on Ethereum and Solana, for US merchants only. USDG works on Ethereum, also US only. Stripe's stablecoin checkout does not take volatile coins such as SOL, BTC or XRP.

The 1.5% fee is far above what the transfer itself costs on-chain, which Yahoo Finance put at a fraction of a cent. You pay for the conversion, compliance and Stripe tooling. If you take a $100 USDC payment, you receive about $98.50 in dollars.

Customers can't dispute a stablecoin payment, because they approve each one from their own wallet. Refunds are possible, full or partial, and always go back as stablecoins to the wallet that paid. Recurring stablecoin payments now work for subscriptions and invoices through Stripe Billing.

Stripe stablecoin payouts, financial accounts and cards

Stripe also lets businesses send and hold stablecoins, as well as take them. The Stripe crypto page lists payouts to sellers and creators, stablecoin accounts (still in preview) and cards that spend a stablecoin balance.

Payouts run through Connect, Stripe's tool for marketplaces. A platform can pay a creator in USDC straight to their wallet. The best-known case on Solana is Meta. On 29 April 2026 Meta began paying some creators in Colombia and the Philippines in USDC on Solana or Polygon, with Stripe doing the work behind the scenes, Decrypt reported. Creators could use wallets such as Phantom.

Stablecoin financial accounts came out in May 2025 for businesses in 101 countries. They hold a dollar balance in stablecoins and can send money out to US and European banks. Visa cards built with Bridge let a business spend that balance anywhere Visa works. Stripe's guide says balances can be held in OUSD or USDC.

We covered the 2025 launch in our write-up of Stripe's Ship or Die talk on stablecoins at scale.

Stripe crypto onramp: buy crypto inside an app

The Stripe crypto onramp lets an app's users buy crypto with a card or bank transfer without leaving the app. Stripe is the seller of record. So Stripe, not the app, checks IDs, screens for sanctions and takes the fraud risk.

There are three ways to add it, per the onramp guide: a Stripe page at crypto.link.com, a widget on your site, or parts built into an iPhone or Android app. All three are in public preview. A business must apply first. Stripe says it reviews most requests within two days.

A separate deal with Crypto.com works the other way round. From January 2026, Crypto.com app users in the US could pay Stripe merchants from their crypto balance while the merchant receives cash, Payments Dive reported.

OUSD and Open Issuance: Bridge stablecoins on Solana

OUSD (Open USD) is a digital dollar issued by Bridge, which Stripe owns. It went live on 30 September 2026 on Solana, Base, Ethereum and Tempo. It is run for Open Standard, a group whose founding members include Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa.

Open Standard's launch post says the cash backing it sits with BlackRock, Lead Bank and other firms, with a monthly report from Bridge. Swapping dollars in and out is 1:1 and free. Stripe's launch post says you can hold, send, spend and accept OUSD across its banking, card, payout, onramp and payment tools.

On Solana, OUSD trades as an SPL token. Our news report on OUSD going live on Solana covers the launch partners in more detail.

OUSD builds on Open Issuance, a Bridge service that lets any business launch its own stablecoin. When Stripe announced it in late 2025, reserves were managed with BlackRock, Fidelity and Superstate. Phantom's CASH was the first token issued through it, Cointelegraph reported.

Tempo blockchain and the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

Tempo is a blockchain built for stablecoin payments, started by Stripe and the investment firm Paradigm. It has been live since 18 March 2026, per the Tempo FAQ. Stripe, Visa, MoneyGram and Zodia Custody run its validators, the computers that confirm payments. Tempo says it plans to open that role to anyone over time.

Tempo matters to Solana users because Stripe now has a chain of its own. Stripe and Tempo built MPP, the Machine Payments Protocol. It lets AI agents pay for a web service with no checkout page. The server asks for payment, the agent pays and tries again. The MPP guide takes cards and stablecoins, but all its crypto examples use Tempo, and Stripe pays the network fees only on Tempo. Solana does not appear in that guide.

Normal stablecoin checkout still offers Solana next to Tempo. For shops whose buyers hold USDC on Solana, nothing has changed. For developers building agent payments, Stripe points to Tempo first.

Bridge and Privy: Stripe's crypto acquisitions

Stripe's crypto tools rest on two firms it bought. The first, Bridge, moves, holds and issues stablecoins behind Stripe's products. Stripe paid $1.1 billion for it. The deal was announced in October 2024 and closed in February 2025.

In February 2026 the US bank regulator, the OCC, gave Bridge early approval to become a national trust bank, FinTech Futures reported. Once final, that would let Bridge hold assets and issue stablecoins under federal rules.

The second, Privy, makes wallets that an app can create for a user behind a simple email login. Stripe bought it in June 2025, when Privy ran more than 75 million accounts, SiliconANGLE reported. Privy still runs as its own product, and many Solana apps use it. Privy's CEO explains the deal in our summary of his Lightspeed interview.

Who should use Stripe for crypto payments

Stripe crypto suits a US business that already uses Stripe and wants to take USDC without touching crypto. You switch it on, and dollars land next to your card sales. It also suits platforms that pay creators abroad in USDC. And it suits apps that want a legal onramp without building their own ID checks.

It suits you less in four cases:

• You want to keep the stablecoins. Payments settle to fiat by default.
• You are outside the US and not in the private preview.
• You want to accept SOL or other volatile tokens.
• Your payments are large or frequent enough that the 1.5% fee matters more than Stripe's convenience.

A Solana-native app that wants payments to stay on-chain may prefer a wallet-to-wallet option.

Is Stripe crypto safe? Risks and limitations

Stripe crypto is safe in the way a big payments firm is safe, but it is not trustless. Stripe and Bridge hold the money between payment and payout. Stripe also picks which coins, networks and countries it supports. It runs no smart contracts of its own on Solana, so there is no code to audit. The risk sits with the company.

• Stripe has dropped crypto before. It supported Bitcoin from 2014 and stopped in 2018, citing slow confirmations and low use.
• Stripe incubated Tempo and runs a Tempo validator, and its newest agent payment tools default to Tempo. Solana is supported, but it is not Stripe's own chain.
• Every payment depends on a stablecoin holding its peg. OUSD reserves are attested monthly, and USDC is issued by Circle USDC$1.000-0.1%.
• Refunds go back to the paying wallet, and a single payment can't exceed $10,000.
• Stripe says changing crypto rules may stop it supporting some use cases or countries. Bridge's federal trust charter was conditional when granted in February 2026.

Stripe crypto alternatives on Solana

Stripe is the easy pick if your business already runs on Stripe. Payment firms built for Solana keep more of the money on-chain and price things in other ways.

• Coinflow is a stablecoin payment service for firms that move between cash and crypto. It runs its own program on Solana.
• MoonPay is the main rival for onramps. In January 2025 it bought Helio, a Solana checkout firm, for $175 million, The Block reported.
• Solana Pay is an open standard for paying wallet to wallet with a QR code. There is no fee beyond the network cost, but the shop must handle cash-out and bookkeeping itself.

The choice is control or ease. Stripe gives you dollars, tax and bookkeeping tools and one dashboard. The Solana options let you keep the coins and skip the 1.5% fee.

Stripe company, valuation and token

Stripe is a private company and has not launched a coin. Any "Stripe token" for sale does not come from Stripe.

Early in 2026 a sale of staff shares valued Stripe at $159 billion, The Block reported. The same report put the payments run through Stripe in 2025 at nearly $2 trillion.

Stripe's crypto story has three parts. First came Bitcoin payments, which it dropped in 2018. Then it came back with crypto payouts and an onramp for crypto firms, before adding stablecoin checkout. Most recently it has built a full stablecoin business around Bridge, Privy, Tempo and OUSD.