Stripe resumes Bitcoin support after 4-year hiatus

Stripe’s faith in Bitcoin appears to have been restored, despite the cryptocurrency’s poor performance the past month. The payments provider has this week resumed support for the cryptocurrency on its platform, following a four-year lapse.

An early supporter of crypto, Stripe had supported Bitcoin payments since 2014. But in early 2018, the company took the decision to stop processing transactions in the cryptocurrency due to “fewer use cases for which accepting or paying with Bitcoin makes sense”.

In a blog on its website, the company explained: “Over the past year or two, as block size limits have been reached, Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange. […] This has led to Bitcoin becoming less useful for payments.”

The company caveated its statement by adding, “Bitcoin itself may become viable for payments again in the future. […] So, we will continue to pay close attention to the ecosystem and to look for opportunities to help our customers by adding support for cryptocurrencies and new distributed protocols in the future.”

That moment has evidently now arrived, as Stripe this week announced a revival in its support of Bitcoin alongside a tranche of new upgrades and services, Stripe Apps, at a developer conference.  

The company has partnered with crypto start-up, OpenNode – which uses the Lightening Network to increase the speed and allow merchants to convert revenue in their Stripe accounts into Bitcoin’ in the cryptocurrency via its app.

Long an advocate of crypto, this is the latest in a series of moves by Stripe in the crypto space, including announcing a stablecoin payments option earlier this year and recruiting a team of crypto engineers to its US offices in 2021.