Shopify teams up with Coinbase and Stripe in USDC stablecoin payments push

Shopify has joined forces with Coinbase and Stripe in an effort to it make easier for merchants to accept payments made in Circle's USDC stablecoin, according to two announcements made Thursday.

"Shoppers will be able to pay with USDC on Base using their preferred crypto wallet," Stripe said in a release. "By default, Stripe will allow merchants to receive stablecoin payments in their preferred local currency, to be deposited in their bank account just like any other payment they receive."

Stripe said the service will be available to Shopify merchants in 34 countries. “Stripe has long handled the hard parts of payments so our merchants don’t have to,” said Shopify COO and VP of Product Kaz Nejatian. "Now they’re doing the same for stablecoins—making it simple for our merchants to meet booming global demand without wrestling with crypto infrastructure."

Thursday's news comes on the heels of both Circle, the world's second-largest stablecoin issuer, successfully launching on IPO on the New York Stock Exchange and Stripe acquiring the crypto wallet firm Privy. Layer 1 blockchain XRP Ledger's mainnet also said on Thursday that it now supports USDC.

More than $94 billion in stablecoin payments have been settled over the last two years, Stripe said. "During that time, monthly payment volume grew from less than $2 billion to over $6.3 billion," the company added.

USDC expanding to new networks and forging new partnerships might help it close the gap on Tether, which is the top stablecoin issuer by overall supply.

Coinbase and Shopify's protocol

Coinbase said along with Shopify it is launching the Commerce Payments Protocol "to address a major gap in crypto: enabling real-world commerce." The company added that "while most onchain payments today work well for peer-to-peer transfers, they fall short of handling the complexity of commercial purchases, which require a multi-stage payment commitment process."

Shopify has, in the past, dabbled in other blockchain focused initiatives. In 2023, Solana's payment system Solana Pay integrated with the e-commerce giant.