Stripe Acquires Privy to Bolster Its Cryptocurrency Game

Stripe is deepening its involvement in the digital assets space by acquiring crypto firm Privy.

Privy, which helps companies build crypto wallets, announced the deal on its website Wednesday (June 11). Terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

“Today, digital ownership and the financial systems that run the modern world are intersecting as never before,” Privy CEO Henri Stern wrote on the company’s blog.

“Like us, Stripe believes in the power of bringing crypto and fiat closer together, marrying these systems so deeply that the distinction becomes almost meaningless. Joining Stripe will accelerate our work to shape this future and provide powerful new capabilities to Stripe and Privy customers alike. Together, we can change how value moves through the Internet.”

According to the blog post, Privy offers customers a “simple API” that lets them “securely spin up powerful wallets,” sign transactions, and integrate any on-chain system. The company says it powers more than 75 million accounts across 1,000-plus developer teams, orchestrating billions in transactions and letting users earn, move and use new assets online.

The announcement comes two weeks after Stripe launched what it called a “major expansion” of its money movement capabilities, part of a larger product rollout by the company.

Stripe’s new offerings let businesses in the U.K. hold, manage and spend from balances in multiple currencies in their Stripe account, while also paying out to third parties in 50 countries with just an email address.

In addition, businesses can now make cross-border sales more easily with 25 new payment methods, such as India’s UPI and the Pix system in Brazil.

“We’re on the cusp of two giant leaps for the economy: stablecoins and AI,” Stripe Co-founder John Collison said in a news release. “Stablecoins are the underdog that everyone’s sleeping on, and AI is on the cusp of rewiring how commerce takes place online through agentic transactions. Our intent is to pull the future forward for all of you, building on Stripe.”

Collison told Bloomberg News last month that the company had held initial talks with banks about using stablecoins while also rolling out a series of stablecoin-related products.

“In the conversations we have with them, they’re very interested,” he said. “This is not something that banks are just kind of brushing away or treating as a fad. Banks are very interested in how they should be integrated with stablecoins into their product offerings as well.”