Three Years After Ditching Bitcoin, Stripe Forms New Crypto Payments Team

American fintech giant Stripe is hiring a new blockchain team to enable encrypted payments for its users.

The $100 billion company, which exited the bitcoin-supporting business three years ago amid slow transactions and rising fees, is set to return to the crypto space.

According to a job page on Stripe's website, the company is hiring four "senior engineers" with work experience in the crypto space. Engineering lead Guillaume Poncin tweeted that he was looking for engineers and designers to "build the future of Web3 payments."

The job listing outlines that future engineers and designers will work on "everything from web/mobile UI to backend, payment and identity systems".

"We've heard that developers and users in the space increasingly need better building blocks for accepting payments, transferring funds, converting between fiat and crypto, and more," the job listing reads. By focusing on these problems and needs, our goal is to build a faster, more trustworthy, higher quality crypto experience."

This morning, Stripe announced the formation of a new Web3 payments team, and Coinbase announced the launch of an NFT product.

Maybe nothing.

— Chris Neumann (@ckneumann) October 12, 2021

Stripe co-founder John Collison said in response to Poncin's post: "Stripe and cryptocurrency have grown up at the same time," and said that the company decided to enter the field after observing "exciting" developments in the field.

"A year after the Bitcoin paper was published, we started writing code. We've been focusing on some things (such as support for Bitcoin in 2013-2015), but developments in recent years (L2, new chains, stablecoins, DeFi) Especially exciting."

Before the company accepted crypto payments, major competitors including Square, Paypal, Mastercard, and Square all entered the crypto space. Square launched BTC transactions through its Cash App in 2018, Paypal launched cryptocurrency support for U.S. customers in October 2020, and Mastercard announced in February that it would support multiple crypto assets on its network.

Stripe initially started accepting bitcoin in 2014, but withdrew support four years later due to its slow transaction times and rising fees. In a blog post on January 23, 2018, Stripe stated that it may return to the industry once crypto payments become "viable," noting the development of the Lightning Network and the "high potential "project.

Earlier in June, Collison hinted that the company would focus on cryptocurrencies again, telling Bloomberg TV:

"If you think about the crypto people and the kind of world we're trying to achieve, I think it's a set of goals that are closely linked."

He added: "We're at a level right now where only one in five interactions are cross-border, and cryptocurrencies are a very exciting direction in trying to address that."

Founded in 2011, the digital payments company is currently valued at about $100 billion. In March 2021, Stripe raised $600 million in a round of financing at a valuation of $95 billion, more than double its 2019 valuation of $35 billion. According to Built With, there are currently 784,256 active websites using Stripe's payments platform.

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