Stripe announced plans to broaden its stablecoin card initiatives to more than 100 countries before the end of the calendar year. Henri Stern, who co-founded crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy and joined Stripe after its acquisition in 2025, now oversees stablecoin and crypto efforts across the company. Stern told CoinDesk that the expansion builds on a $1.2 billion volume of stablecoin card spending recorded in the most recent month, a figure that has tripled over the past year. Current participants in the program include crypto exchange Kraken, fintech firm Ramp and payments app Morse.

The move reflects growing interest in using digital dollars for everyday transactions, a trend that payment‑scan data shows is accelerating but still represents a small share of total global card activity. Stripe’s strategy involves integrating stablecoin functionality into existing infrastructure rather than creating a separate crypto stack. The company has already processed hundreds of billions of dollars in card volume since 2018 and issued over 400 million cards worldwide.

To support the rollout, Stripe has combined its issuing capabilities with Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure firm it acquired for $1.1 billion in 2024. Bridge co‑founder Zach Abrams now leads Open Standard, a venture developing Open USD, a stablecoin intended to compete with Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT. Stern emphasized that Stripe aims to remain agnostic to any particular stablecoin or blockchain, allowing users to mix and match the tools they prefer.

The expansion also aligns with broader industry shifts toward regulated finance and the exploration of tokenized deposits and decentralized finance applications. While stablecoins currently account for the majority of Stripe’s blockchain‑related work, the company is also investigating additional digital asset use cases. Analysts note that the success of the rollout will depend on how quickly partners can adapt their own systems to support stablecoin payments across new markets.