Michael Arrington, the founder of the foreign media “TechCrunch”, revealed on social media that the financial technology company Stripe has completed its largest acquisition to date, acquiring the stablecoin platform Bridge for a transaction value of $1.1 billion. The software tools provided by Bridge can help businesses accept stablecoin payments.
Bridge was founded by entrepreneurs Sean Yu and Zach Abrams, both of whom previously worked at Coinbase. In addition, they previously founded the peer-to-peer payment company Evenly, which has been acquired by Block.
According to Forbes, Bridge had previously raised $58 million, including a $40 million Series A financing, with a valuation of $200 million at the time. The $1.1 billion acquisition price represents a significant increase compared to the previous valuation.
As of the deadline, Stripe has not released official information about the acquisition of Bridge. According to The Block, if this transaction is completed, it will be the largest acquisition in Stripe’s history and the largest acquisition in the cryptocurrency industry to date.
Stripe terminated its support for Bitcoin in 2018 but officially restarted cryptocurrency payment services in October of this year, allowing US businesses to make payments with the Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon blockchains using the USD Coin (USDC). Stripe is also the first customer of Paxos’ new stablecoin payment platform launched last week.
