Update (Oct. 21 at 3:13 am UTC): Sources at Stripe say the deal hasn’t gone through but would not go on record.
Payment processing giant Stripe has acquired stablecoin platform Bridge in a $1.1 billion deal, according to TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.
According to reports on Oct. 17, the deal was in “advanced stages,” though representatives from both organizations had yet to address the reports.
“This deal is done. $1.1b,” Arrington wrote in an Oct. 20 X post. Arrington did not elaborate.
Source: Michael Arrington
The acquisition would be the largest for Stripe, which is based in San Francisco and Dublin and was valued at $70 billion in July. It would also be one of the biggest acquisitions in crypto history.
Bridge did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Stripe responded to Cointelegraph but did not provide a statement on record.
Stripe is a payment processing platform that allows businesses to accept credit and debit cards or other payments online.
In March, it reported passing the $1 trillion milestone for total payment volume in 2023, with the output of businesses using Stripe amounting to about 1% of global gross domestic product (GDP).
The reported deal comes just six months after its co-founder John Collison announced the company would begin supporting global stablecoin payments “this summer.”
It also comes less than two weeks after Stripe introduced stablecoin payments on its main payments user interface by integrating Circle USD (USDC) stablecoin.
Related: Stripe’s new stablecoin option gains traction in 70 countries on day 1
Bridge is a stablecoin-based payments network founded in 2022 by two former Coinbase executives — Zach Abrams and Sean Yu — to compete with the SWIFT network and credit cards.
Abrams was the head of consumer at Coinbase and founded Evenly, a P2P payments company that Square eventually acquired.
Yu held engineering roles at Coinbase, Square, Doordash and Airbnb.
Bridge allows businesses to create, store, send and accept stablecoins, which some have referred to as the Web3 answer to Stripe. This year, the firm received $58 million in funding from Sequoia, Ribbit, Index and other investors.
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