It may be “crypto winter,” but it’s a “stablecoin summer” as digital dollar adoption booms, payments giant Stripe said Tuesday in its annual letter.
Bridge, the stablecoin orchestration platform Stripe acquired in 2024, saw transaction volume more than quadruple last year, according to the letter.
The firm also said it will “soon” launch the mainnet of Tempo, the payments-focused blockchain it is developing with crypto firm Paradigm and began testing in December.
Stripe has increasingly focused on bringing crypto technology to its payments network, seeing stablecoins as an alternative to cross-border transfers and programmable payments. Stablecoins are a $300 billion class of cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat money like the US dollar that use blockchains for faster and cheaper settlement.
Their utility has led to stablecoins being decoupled from crypto market cycles, the payments firm wrote. While bitcoin fell 50% from its peak in October and lost 6% during 2025, stablecoin payment volume doubled to about $400 billion, with about 60% due to business-to-business transactions, it said, citing a recent report by McKinsey and Artemis.
“Stablecoin payments are progressing quietly while real-world uptake continues apace,” the firm wrote in the letter.
To highlight the growing stablecoin demand, Meta (META), the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, plans to launch its own stablecoin later this year with an external partner, CoinDesk reported on Tuesday.
Stripe said businesses processed $1.9 trillion on its platform last year, up 34% from 2024. The company also announced a takeover offer valuing it at $159 billion.
Read more: Stripe’s stablecoin firm Bridge wins initial national bank trust charter approval
