Shopify to Enable Merchants to Accept USDC Stablecoin Payments

Shopify has begun rolling out a feature that enables merchants to accept USDC stablecoins within their existing payment and order fulfillment flows.

This new capability will make it easier for merchants to tap into global markets, as they will be able to “sell to a customer on the other side of the world as easily as their next-door neighbor,” the company said in a Thursday blog post.

This new feature was developed by Shopify in partnership with Coinbase and Stripe, according to the post. It uses the Base network built by Coinbase for moving money.

Shopify merchants’ customers can pay with USDC on Base from hundreds of supported crypto wallets, and merchants can receive their local currency by default or choose to claim USDC directly into their own wallet, the post said.

No matter how merchants choose to receive the payments, there will be no foreign transaction or exchange fees, per the post.

“By embracing stablecoins, merchants aren’t just adopting a new payment method, they’re tapping into global markets, opening the door to global customers, and joining the future of borderless, accessible commerce,” the post said.

In its own blog post about this new offering, Coinbase said the feature was launched with early access merchants Thursday and will expand to stores around the globe later this year.

“Shopify chose Base to bring crypto payments mainstream because it offers fast, cheap and secure onchain transactions everywhere around the world,” Coinbase said in its post. “This partnership represents a significant step toward Base’s mission to bring a billion people onchain.”

Stripe said in a Thursday blog post that in a few weeks, this feature will be available to Shopify merchants in 34 countries.

The company added that the offering is enabled by Stripe Connect and that Stripe’s deeper partnership with Shopify will “bring the benefits of stablecoins to a massive number of businesses at once.”

“Now those businesses can reach more markets at lower costs — all without having to change how they already run their business,” Neetika Bansal, head of money movement at crypto at Stripe, said in the blog post.