Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of Stripe, explained why more and more businesses are using stablecoins: they make real-world financial processes faster, cheaper, and more reliable. His comments on September 5 follow Stripe’s recent launch of “Tempo,” a new blockchain network developed with crypto investment firm Paradigm, specifically designed to handle stablecoin payments.
In a thread on the social news site Hacker News, Collison explained that after a decade of being “disappointed with crypto’s payments utility, Stripe observed a clear shift. “These businesses are not using crypto because it’s crypto or for speculative benefit,” he wrote. “They’re performing real-world financial activity, and they’ve found that crypto (via stablecoins) is easier, faster, better than the status quo.”
He highlighted key advantages such as near-instant settlement, lower costs, and direct on-chain access to U.S. dollars.
Stripe’s Infrastructure for Stablecoins
The launch of the Tempo network is Stripe’s latest move to build infrastructure for this growing demand. The company said the network is designed to handle more than 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) with completion times of less than one second.
This comes after Stripe bought the stablecoin platform Bridge in October 2024 and the launch of “Stablecoin Financial Accounts” in May 2025. These accounts can be used by companies in 101 countries and will initially support USDC and USDB.
Stripe is continuing to grow quickly in traditional banking, which is why they are putting more effort into stablecoins. The total amount of payments the company handled in 2024 was $1.4 trillion, which is 38% more than the previous year and equal to about 1.3% of the world’s GDP. In a May announcement, Stripe noted that stablecoin transaction volumes had surged over 50% in the past year.
Stripe’s strategic attention on stablecoins is a big sign that they can be used in mainstream business finance. By building dedicated, high-performance infrastructure like Tempo, the payments giant is doing more than just accepting crypto.
Instead, it’s giving companies the building blocks they need to use stablecoins in their daily operations. Collison’s comparison of Tempo to a “decentralized, internet-scale SWIFT” shows how serious the company is about challenging traditional methods. Stripe’s support and infrastructure could make stablecoins much more popular as a main tool for global trade, since it is a trillion dollar a year company
Also Read: Stripe’s Tempo Blockchain Onboards Visa, Deutsche Bank as Partners
