Yesterday Stripe agreed to acquire Privy which provides a white label onboarding and wallet service for developers to integrate into crypto solutions. The three year old startup has grown at a rapid clip. When it raised its last funding round in March it said it supported 50 million wallets, with that figure now up to 75 million supporting 1,000 applications. It has received $40 million in backing to date.
The news follows Stripe’s launch of stablecoin financial accounts last month, after its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge for $1.1 billion in October 2024. Stripe’s engagement with blockchain should not come as a surprise. Since November 2021 one of its board members has been Matt Huang from crypto venture firm Paradigm. And it’s a small board with just seven members, including the two Stripe founders and two from Sequoia. Both Paradigm and Sequoia were backers of Privy.
This move builds on Stripe’s broader expansion beyond its traditional payments focus. While Stripe started by supporting e-commerce payments which remains its core focus, in 2018 it launched a Point of Sale terminal. Notably, Privy also built a tap to pay functionality into its wallet, which is used by companies ranging from NFT firm OpenSea to social networks Farcaster and Zora.
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