Starting with Twitter, Stripe will enable companies to pay their customers using cryptocurrency in the latest example of the growing acceptance of digital assets by significant financial institutions throughout the world. The stablecoin USDC, which is minted by crypto startup Circle, will be accepted by the $95 billion online payments giant starting Friday. To keep their value constant, stablecoins are digital tokens tethered to fiat currencies. In USDC’s instance, the cryptocurrency is backed by the U.S. dollar, as the name indicates. This payment mechanism will be implemented by Twitter initially.
After a lot of speculation about a possible acquisition by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the social media platform will begin distributing some of the money it makes from its premium Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows services to a select group of artists on Friday. After discontinuing bitcoin support four years ago, this is Stripe’s first major foray into the crypto world since then.
