Stripe and Coinbase Are Racing to Own Crypto Payments. Who Will Win?

I’ve followed Stripe and Coinbase for a long time, and they are so different. Recently, I started to notice they were each dipping their toes into the other’s pond. Stripe into crypto, and Coinbase into payments. I wanted to explore where these initiatives might lead, and how they might drive these two titans to compete. 

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Stripe and Coinbase Are Racing to Own Crypto Payments. Who Will Win?

As Stripe gets deeper into crypto, and Coinbase wades into commerce, it may be only a matter of time before the two compete head to head.

On the heels of the passage of the GENIUS Act, the market flooded with announcements from companies launching stablecoin initiatives, and even their own blockchains. Once largely the domain of crypto-native firms, the space is catching the attention of major financial services firms broadly, from banks to fintech giants. All of a sudden, everyone wants to be a crypto company. 

Among the fray is payment processing titan Stripe. The company, founded by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison, is known primarily for providing the underlying infrastructure that facilitates e-commerce payments. It processed a whopping $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024, up nearly 40% year over year and equating to a little over 1% of global GDP. 

The company recently re-entered the crypto market after a several years’ long hiatus with a slew of moves, including introducing stablecoin payments, the $1.1 billion acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider Bridge, its June announcement to acquire crypto wallet provider Privy, and the quiet building of its own blockchain, dubbed Tempo. 

Together, these efforts signal the company is placing large bets on crypto and intends to maintain its dominant position as an infrastructure provider as the crypto and traditional financial services worlds collide. They’re also shaping up to pit the company against another titan doing the same from the other side: Coinbase. 

The Fight for Stablecoins

Stripe and Coinbase operate very different businesses. While Stripe is a payment processor serving primarily e-commerce platforms and merchants, Coinbase started as a cryptocurrency trading platform that now has business lines across almost all crypto activity. One is a mainstay of the traditional payments ecosystem, the other is a crypto-native conglomerate. Each, however, is wading into the other’s field. 

Stripe is making major moves in crypto and, specifically, the stablecoin arena. Back in October, it began allowing merchants to accept stablecoin payments that settle as fiat in their Stripe balance. In late April, Stripe-owned Bridge announced that developers using Bridge could now offer stablecoin-linked Visa cards to their end customers. Then, in May, Stripe announced that it was launching stablecoin financial accounts, supported by the Bridge acquisition. According to the company, “Entrepreneurs and businesses in 101 countries previously unsupported by Stripe can now: hold a dollar-denominated stablecoin balance; send and receive US dollars via ACH or wire; send and receive euros via SEPA; and send and receive stablecoins globally across eight blockchain networks.” Stripe also facilitates stablecoin payouts. 

Meanwhile, Coinbase is wading into the commerce sphere. Most notably, it recently announced it is working with e-commerce experience provider Shopify (which is also one of Stripe’s major clients; Stripe powers Shopify Payments) to enable the company to allow merchants to accept stablecoin USDC. This announcement is part of a wider launch for Coinbase Payments, “a stablecoin payments stack designed for commerce platforms.” According to Coinbase, Coinbase Payments allows platforms to “offer instant, 24/7 USDC payments to your merchants — globally, securely, and without blockchain complexity.” Coinbase Payments falls under Coinbase’s Commerce arm and includes a new open-source Commerce Payments Protocol, built in collaboration with Shopify, to effectively mimic the credit card payment flow onchain. (This allows for situations like canceled orders and only charges merchants for settled transactions.)

“The Coinbase x Shopify collaboration is just the first example of how we're unlocking stablecoin payments for commerce platforms. We're offering Coinbase Payments as a service to any payment service provider, marketplace, or commerce infra provider to bring stablecoin payments to the market,” a Coinbase representative told Unchained.

At stake for both of these companies is capitalizing on the stablecoin opportunity in commerce, with the goal to provide the infrastructure that powers these payments as they grow in adoption — total value of stablecoins is projected to reach $400 billion by year end and $2 trillion by 2028. Stripe already has the merchant network; it is now building the crypto infrastructure. Coinbase has the infrastructure; it’s now building the merchant ecosystem.

A Race Is On

Today, these two companies have pretty close ties and have even partnered — Stripe offers USDC on Base as part of its crypto payouts product as well as its fiat-to-crypto onramp, for example. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also recently joined Cheeky Pint, Stripe’s podcast hosted by John Collison. However, as the two companies get deeper into the stablecoin opportunity, more competitive dynamics may be at play. And that possibility is largely tied to the development of Stripe’s blockchain, Tempo. 

With its own chain, Stripe would not need to process transactions through other chains like Base. That would not only reduce its reliance on partners like Coinbase but also allow it to achieve greater speed and reduce costs. It currently charges a 1.5% transaction fee for businesses accepting stablecoin payments vs. Coinbase Commerce’s 1%. With Tempo, it would likely be able to make that even more competitive. In this scenario, the question becomes whether Stripe can build the infrastructure before Coinbase builds the merchant community or vice versa. 

How This Plays Out

To understand how this might unfold, let’s use Shopify as an example. Shopify allows its merchants to accept USDC by leveraging the Base network for transaction processing, while Stripe handles payouts to the merchant in either their local currency or USDC. 

Shopify is a great example of a battleground for Stripe and Coinbase — its gross payments volume reportedly reached $181.24 billion in 2024. If even 1% of that shifted to stablecoins, we’re talking about nearly $2 billion in stablecoin payments. Right now, all three companies are critical to this opportunity. Shopify is the merchant-facing platform, Coinbase is providing the transaction layer, and Stripe is facilitating merchant payouts. But will that always be the case?

Given Stripe’s relationship with Shopify, it’s not unreasonable to figure that it may make sense for Shopify to leverage everything from Stripe, once it has the full stack — the ability to offer stablecoin payments, process those payments, and house those payments. However, if in the meantime, Coinbase is able to entrench itself with Shopify, it would likely be harder to cut it out of the equation. Getting in early with Shopify is a very smart move on Coinbase’s part, especially given the joint-build on the Commerce Payments Protocol. 

These dynamics hold true outside of the Shopify example. Coinbase will need to work strategically to achieve the scale it needs with commerce platforms to compete with Stripe long term. On the other hand, if Stripe can build the infrastructure quickly enough to keep those platforms from looking elsewhere, it will be well-positioned to offer more and win more. Overall, this may come down to what is harder or faster to build, infrastructure or relationships. 

Moving forward, we can expect to see Coinbase continue to ink deals with commerce platforms. Some examples from Stripe’s portfolio that may make sense include big names that work with many businesses, like Instacart, or those serving the gig economy, like Lyft. Stripe, meanwhile, will probably lean heavily on its recent acquisitions as it looks to build out its crypto infrastructure. In addition to its dealings with Visa and the underpinning of Stripe’s stablecoin financial accounts, Bridge can provide support in other promising areas, like by enabling developers to issue their own stablecoins in minutes. Privy, for its part, gives Stripe the ability to embed crypto wallets into websites and apps. 

One Big Caveat

It’s worth pointing out that this race is a long one. It is still very early days — stablecoins are far from a mainstream payment tool, and before these companies can truly contemplate competing with each other, they (and the rest of the industry) will need to change that. Put another way, while Coinbase and Stripe may be going after the same opportunity, it will only matter if that opportunity actually materializes. 

Both companies likely realize this, and it’s why they are currently working together and working on competing initiatives at the same time. As with many companies in this space, the intent is probably to figure out how to drive the multi-trillion-dollar market opportunity to reality first, while ensuring they’re positioned to win later. So, will Stripe and Coinbase become competitors? The answer is likely yes, eventually. But, first, they need to build the track.

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