Stripe says it’s open to accepting crypto for payments, three years after ending bitcoin support
Stripe isn’t ruling out accepting cryptocurrency as a method of payment in the future, according to co-founder John Collison.
The online payments company ended support for bitcoin payments in 2018, citing the digital coin’s notoriety for volatile price swings and a lack of efficiency in making everyday transactions.
“Crypto obviously means a lot of different things to a lot of different people,” Collison said at a CNBC-moderated panel at the Fintech Abu Dhabi festival on Tuesday.
Collison said there were some aspects to crypto — such as its use as a speculative investment — that are “not that relevant to what we do at Stripe.”
But, he added: “There have been a lot of developments of late with an eye to making cryptocurrencies better and, in particular, scalable and acceptable cost as a payment method.”
Stripe Expands Stripe Terminal Across Europe
Stripe, a technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet, announced the expansion of Stripe Terminal to Ireland, France, Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands.
As European consumers return to in-person shopping, Terminal extends Stripe’s payments infrastructure to the physical world. Global businesses like Shopify already use Terminal to build their own in-person checkout with flexible developer tools, pre-certified card readers, and cloud-based hardware management.
“For Shopify merchants, integrating their offline and online businesses is crucial, and that includes payments,” “We are seeing hybrid shopping take on greater importance for consumers this coming Black Friday Cyber Monday. The expansion of Stripe Terminal will mean that more of our merchants can manage in-person and online payments through Shopify, streamlining their workflows to provide a greater consumer experience.” Shimona Mehta, Managing Director, EMEA, Shopify.
Before Stripe Terminal, internet businesses in Europe wanting to take in-person payments had to use an entirely different payments system. While selling online has become easier, extending sales offline has meant stitching together point-of-sale hardware and software, managing burdensome security and EMV certification processes, as well as complying with changing regulatory and hardware requirements. Stripe Terminal eliminates that complexity, providing a simple omnichannel payments offering, and now it does so across many of Europe’s largest economies.
Stripe Terminal for Platforms and Marketplaces
One in three European businesses uses a software platform to help sell goods online. Using Stripe Terminal and Stripe Connect, software platforms can provide these businesses with the capability to take in-person payments as well as online payments. Platforms can manage orders for Terminal hardware on behalf of their users, and Stripe handles all the shipping and logistics.
With the combination of Stripe Terminal and Stripe Connect, taxis across 64 German cities on Taxi.de can now take in-car card payments, as well as provide the option for riders to pay online.
“With Stripe Terminal we can provide our riders with the option to pay for their taxi once their journey is complete. Before this would have meant asking drivers to onboard onto a completely different payments system, but now it’s seamless.” Ulf Bögeholz, CTO, Taxi.de
Similarly, cinemas in the UK can unify online ticket sales and real-world popcorn sales through a SaaS platform like Indy Cinema Group.
“As the point of sale operating system for independent cinemas, it was hard having to see our users manage separate, disconnected products in order to accept payments in the real world. With Stripe Terminal we can add more value and efficiency for our users, and our users can sidestep the drudgery of manually reconciling their online and in-person payments, leaving them to focus on their customers and growing their cinemas business.” Ian Brown, CEO, Indy Cinema Group
Stripe Terminal For Modern Retailers
Stripe Terminal can also enable Europe’s tech-forward retailers to bring online experiences into the real world. From online fashion retailers enabling real-world pop-ups, to music labels selling merchandise at live shows, Stripe Terminal can power omnichannel brand experiences for modern retailers.
Stripe Terminal consists of three components:
A set of flexible SDKs and APIs for creating a fully custom checkout experience using web or mobile apps, allowing for a single integration to power payments globally. Pre-certified card readers that work seamlessly with Stripe Terminal’s APIs and SDKs, ready for EMV contact, EMV contactless, and mobile wallets (such as Apple Pay or Google Pay) out of the box, secured with end-to-end encryption. Fleet management features for managing and monitoring hardware at scale across multiple locations or connected accounts—right from the Stripe Dashboard.
“Over the last decade, it’s become much easier to accept in-person or online payments. But as soon as you want to do both, it would get complex and challenging. The expansion of Stripe Terminal means businesses in Europe around the world can easily unify their in-person and online payments experiences.” Matt Henderson, EMEA Business Lead, Stripe.
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