The global payments company Stripe is expanding its stablecoin card business worldwide, betting that digital dollars can serve as an additional way for consumers and businesses to pay alongside traditional currencies.

Henri Stern, CEO and co-founder of the crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, which was acquired by Stripe last year, has additionally taken on responsibility for stablecoins and crypto across Stripe, as the company announced to CoinDesk. Stripe expects its stablecoin card programs to reach more than 100 countries by the end of the year, Stern said in an interview. Current clients include the crypto exchange Kraken, the fintech company Ramp, and the payments app Morse.

The expansion comes at a time when stablecoin cards are emerging as a fast-growing segment of the digital dollar market exceeding $300 billion. According to Paymentscan, approximately $1.2 billion in stablecoins were spent via cards last month, three times the amount from a year earlier. Although this remains a fraction of the global card payment market, the figures show that stablecoins are increasingly being used beyond crypto trading and cross-border transfers in everyday purchases. The country target for the end of the year gives the rollout a concrete checkpoint, while the monthly spending figures provide a way to gauge whether usage expands alongside the geographic reach.

Stablecoins as a Payment Alternative, Not a Replacement

Stripe's approach is to integrate stablecoins into the infrastructure the company already operates, Stern explained to CoinDesk. According to him, the company has issued more than 400 million cards and processed hundreds of billions of dollars in card payment volume since 2018. Its stablecoin offering combines this card issuance business with Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company that Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in 2024.

For a company like Ramp, this could mean introducing a corporate card to new countries using stablecoins instead of rebuilding banking and payment connections market by market. Kraken, on the other hand, has explored allowing customers to spend directly from accounts where they already hold digital assets.

Stripe has been assembling the building blocks for a broader blockchain payment offensive. After acquiring Bridge and Privy, the company also partnered with the crypto investment firm Paradigm to develop Tempo, a blockchain designed for payments. Stripe is also a founding investor in Open Standard, the company developing Open USD, a stablecoin that aims to compete with Circle's USDC and Tether's USDT. Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams recently moved to Open Standard to work there full-time.

According to Stern, these products are intended to work closely together without locking customers into Stripe's ecosystem.

"If you're using Stripe, Bridge, Privy, Tempo, Open USD, it should be absolutely amazing, and it should feel like these systems were built to exist together," he said.