To better serve the 30% of its partner businesses that operate on recurring revenue models, including most AI companies, Stripe is introducing subscription features for stablecoin payments.
The fintech company Stripe has launched stablecoin subscriptions, built on a smart contract that lets customers save their wallet as a payment method and authorize it once for recurring payments without re-signing each transaction.
The need to authorize every payment on the blockchain separately has long been one of the main hurdles for recurring on-chain transactions. Therefore, Stripe’s innovation might be a game-changer for many companies operating on a recurring revenue model.
At launch, the new stablecoin-based subscription feature will be available only in private preview to US-based businesses. Supporting subscription payments are currently made exclusively in USDC over the Base and Polygon blockchains. At the same time, the scope of supported crypto wallets a customer may add as a payment method is quite wide – over 400.
Stripe has been experimenting with stablecoin payments for over a year now. Just recently, the firm has also introduced Open Issuance —a platform that lets businesses launch their own stablecoin in days.
Transactions in USDC on the Stripe platform instantly settle on-chain and automatically convert to fiat. Therefore, its customers who choose stablecoins as a form of payment for subscriptions get seamless fiat settlement and can manage fiat and stablecoin subscription payments together in the Stripe Dashboard.
The benefits of stablecoin-based payments can be expanded across the clients’ entire product suite, as stablecoin-based subscriptions integrate with Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite and Stripe Billing.
According to the company, most of the top 20 AI companies using Stripe are based in the U.S., yet about 60% of their revenue comes from international markets. However, cross-border payments often come with high fees, slow settlement times, and failed transactions. To address these issues, some AI companies, like Shadeform, have started using stablecoins for around 20% of their payments, benefiting from faster settlement and lower processing costs. Others may turn to stablecoins now as well, due to the availability of stablecoin subscription payments.
