Three months ago Stripe completed its $1.1 billion acquisition of stablecoin orchestration firm Bridge and yesterday it revealed that Stablecoin Financial Accounts using Bridge’s technology are now available in 101 countries. Bridge still operates independently from Stripe, but the payments firm will leverage its technology, as in this example.
The stablecoin accounts particularly target businesses in countries with volatile currencies to enable them to hold dollar stablecoins. These organizations can receive money in crypto or via bank transfers and pay globally using stablecoins.
While it’s not emphasized, a key advantage is the businesses don’t have to worry about self custody or relying on a cryptocurrency exchange to hold their assets. However, the company did not elaborate on who is acting as stablecoin custodian on behalf of Stripe.
The list of countries where the accounts are offered mainly includes emerging market regions but excludes those with cryptocurrency laws. For example, it includes most African countries, but not major jurisdictions such as Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa.
Functionally, the Stablecoin Financial Accounts will initially support USDC and Bridge’s own USDB stablecoin, which was also unveiled yesterday (not to be confused with the existing token of the same name from Blast).
Bridge unveils USDB stablecoin
Bridge already provides a solution to enable companies to mint their own branded stablecoins and transact with them. USDB uses the same technology, with the reserves that back the stablecoin held in bank accounts and BlackRock short term money market funds. The startup’s documentation also mentions Fidelity and fund administrator Apex as partners. Fidelity has a digital asset custody license, although it’s not clear if that’s their role.
Given Bridge’s target clients are developers that want to use its infrastructure to make international payments, it will share most of the stablecoin revenues it earns on money market funds with its developer partners as fees. It also offers free transfers into USDB from other stablecoins such as USDC.
“USDB introduces a more equitable model where these benefits can be shared between the issuer, developers, and end users,” the company said.
Based on this, we’d speculate Bridge might be planning to provide code that supports developers offering rewards to their clients for holding stablecoins. However, that’s not allowed in some places.
For example, draft legislation on stablecoins in the United States bans the payment of interest to end users by the stablecoin issuer. But it doesn’t prevent other parties paying interest, so it’s viable for developers to offer rewards. By contrast, Europe has a regime that prevents interest payments by issuers and crypto-asset service providers.
The EU’s requirements would not be a priority for Bridge or Stripe, because the region is well served for payments. Stablecoin demand is driven by jurisdictions with expensive cross border payments or high inflation.
Meanwhile, we previously reported that Bridge signed an agreement with Visa last week to enable its developer partners to issue Visa cards to their clients, allowing them to spend stablecoins. Merchants are paid out in their local currency.
