Stripe, one of the world’s largest payment platforms, just announced its latest move into crypto by acquiring Privy, a Web3 wallet infrastructure firm. The announcement came on June 11 , marking another step in Stripe’s growing ambition to integrate digital assets into mainstream finance.
The Privy deal follows Stripe’s earlier acquisition of Bridge, a stablecoin platform bought for $1.1 billion. Now, with Privy joining the stack, Stripe looks ready to offer something deeper than speculation: actual, everyday crypto utility at scale.
Privy, founded to simplify crypto wallet infrastructure, has become one of the go-to providers for embedded wallets across Web3 apps. Backed by heavyweights like Sequoia Capital, Coinbase, and Paradigm, Privy raised over $40 million to date before Stripe’s acquisition.
Why Stripe Is Betting on Crypto
Stripe already processes payments for half of the Fortune 100 and 78% of the Forbes AI 50. Last year alone, the platform processed $1.4 trillion in total volume, around 1.3% of global GDP. That growth outpaces the S&P 500 by a factor of seven.
Stripe is preparing to serve billions of people, from Silicon Valley to emerging markets.
Privy’s Role in Stripe’s Expansion:
Privy brings serious scale to the table. The platform supports over 75 million accounts already, making it one of the largest wallet infrastructures in Web3 today.
Their tech allows apps to embed crypto wallets natively, often letting users create and use wallets without downloading separate apps or memorizing seed phrases. That ease of use is exactly what Stripe wants for mainstream adoption.
With Stripe behind them, Privy’s infrastructure can now reach more developers, larger businesses, and potentially billions of consumers without compromising the user ownership principles at the heart of crypto.
The Bigger Strategy: Stripe Is Quietly Building a Web3 Stack
Stripe’s moves are intentional. The Bridge acquisition solved stablecoin payments. Privy solves wallets.
Together, this gives Stripe an emerging full-stack Web3 toolkit:
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Fiat on-ramps already live
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Stablecoin rails being built
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Wallet infrastructure fully embedded
Unlike many crypto-native platforms, Stripe isn’t building hype or something, its building systems. And now, with Privy’s help, Stripe is preparing to make crypto payments invisible to the average user. It just works.
Why It Matters for the Industry
So why should the broader crypto world care about a TradFi giant buying a wallet company?
Because Stripe’s footprint gives crypto real distribution. Instead of crypto being its own isolated universe, deals like this help merge the two worlds, crypto rails beneath familiar payment interfaces. At the same time, the emphasis on stablecoins (via Bridge) and wallets (via Privy) shows that Stripe isn’t chasing the speculative coin trade. They’re focused on payment use cases, global transfers, stable savings, and giving non-crypto users access to these tools by default.
The Privy team made it clear this acquisition won’t change their independence or crypto-first commitment. As Privy shared in their official announcement:
Final Thoughts: Infrastructure Before Hype
While much of the crypto world still focuses on tokens and speculation, Stripe is building what matters: usable, invisible crypto infrastructure, Stablecoins, Wallets, Real products. With Privy now part of the team, Stripe quietly set the stage to dominate the next wave of global digital payments.
What’s your take? Will Stripe lead the next big crypto adoption wave, or is this just early groundwork?
