Like Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge, open issuance could be a major catalyst for driving stablecoin adoption by non-crypto businesses, though the early adopters are all blockchain firms.
“We are just really devout believers in the power of stablecoins to improve global money movement and storage,” said William Gaybrick, Stripe’s president of technology and business, in an interview with Fortune. “Open issuance is itself a very powerful lever to do that further.”
Stripe grew into a Silicon Valley juggernaut by building payment processing software for online merchants and mobile apps, building essential infrastructure that enabled e-commerce. Crypto proponents have long argued that stablecoins represent the natural next step, facilitating near-instantaneous transactions with minuscule fees by using blockchain technology.
“For some of these major platforms or financial services companies,” he said, “If you’re storing balance or points on behalf of your consumers, or if you really want to store balance on behalf of your customers, stablecoins can be powerful.”
The perpetual question in crypto, however, is whether the technology will be able to attract blockchain outsiders. The first stablecoin launched through the new product is by Phantom, a crypto wallet company, and the other two announced companies that utilize Stripe’s open issuance are also crypto companies, Hyperliquid and Consensys’ Metamask.
Gaybrick acknowledged that he doesn’t know when stablecoins will be more widely adopted by non-crypto-native firms, but he said that open issuance is an important step in creating a better user experience. “Merchants, which are always our primary customer, are the ones who are going to onboard mainstream U.S. consumers,” he said.
