Bridge was founded to make stablecoins as simple for developers as Stripe made card payments. Head of product Mai Leduc explained the vision as “the Stripe of stablecoins” — abstracting away blockchain complexity while embedding compliance from the ground up. Developers interact with application programming interfaces (APIs); the conversion, custody and settlement are all handled behind the scenes. This approach reflects the view that for stablecoins to scale, they must be treated as infrastructure rather than a speculative product. From startup to Stripe backbone for stablecoins Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge in early 2025 accelerated this vision. Bridge became the backbone of Stripe’s Stablecoin Financial Accounts, now offered in 100+ countries and regions. Through these accounts, businesses can hold balances in fiat or stablecoins, receive payments globally, and disburse payouts without needing specialised crypto expertise. Stablecoins are thus integrated into existing workflows — the merchant sees only their Stripe dashboard, while Bridge manages the complexity underneath. Leduc stressed that integration was about utility, not visibility. Bridge’s USDB stablecoins are not being presented as a consumer-facing brand but as a settlement rail. “Nobody needs to know they are using a stablecoin,” she argued. What matters is that merchants and consumers experience seamless transactions, with lower costs and faster settlement. Crucially, compliance is baked in. By embedding anti-money laundering (AML), know-your-customer (KYC) and custody standards into the infrastructure, Bridge ensures enterprises can adopt stablecoins without stepping into regulatory grey zones. For financial institutions and enterprises, this lowers the barriers to experimentation and adoption. The case for invisible, programmable money For Leduc, invisibility is a feature, not a flaw. Stablecoins deliver their greatest value when they disappear into the fabric of payments, much like the transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) in the internet era. A consumer tapping their phone at a checkout should not need to know whether settlement occurs through fiat rails or stablecoin rails — the experience should be identical. The benefits, however, are clear: speed, lower cost, and programmability. Traditional cross-border flows often move through correspondent banking networks, taking days and cutting deeply into transaction values through fees. Stablecoins compress that into seconds with negligible cost, improving both consumer experience and merchant margins. Research shows that cross-border payment fees currently cost 6.4% of transaction value, a gap stablecoins are designed to close. Programmability is another driver. Stablecoins allow treasurers and platforms to automate disbursements, manage escrow, and trigger payments based on contracts or events. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Asia Pacific (APAC), where liquidity pressures are acute, instant settlement can significantly improve working capital cycles. By embedding programmability into existing accounts, Bridge makes these advanced functions accessible without new systems. Adoption evidence supports the approach. Within one week of enabling stablecoin payments, Stripe processed transactions from over 70 countries, exceeding the total Bitcoin payments it handled over 18 months in 2015 and 2016. Today, stablecoin payments are flowing from 120+ countries, confirming demand for faster and cheaper rails is global, not niche. Leduc cautioned, however, that adoption is uneven. While Singapore has taken a leadership role with a regulatory framework for stablecoins, many APAC jurisdictions remain cautious. Bridge’s “compliance by design” model is intended to smooth this uneven landscape by giving enterprises a safe way to adopt. Turning stablecoin balances into everyday spending power The Visa partnership demonstrates how invisible rails can work in practice. A consumer in Latin America, for example, may hold a digital wallet balance in Circle’s USDC stablecoin. With a Visa card backed by Bridge, that consumer can swipe at any merchant in the Visa network. The merchant sees a normal Visa transaction, but behind the scenes, Bridge converts the stablecoin into local fiat and settles with Visa. Leduc emphasised that the process is completely invisible to the merchant. Merchants do not need to change their acquiring setup or integrate crypto-specific systems. For consumers, the experience is no different than using a debit card. What changes is the efficiency: funds move faster, fees are lower, and stablecoin balances can be spent globally without friction. This model is particularly compelling in regions with fragmented banking access. In Latin America, millions of consumers already hold stablecoins in local wallets but face hurdles spending them internationally. A Visa card linked to stablecoin balances closes that gap, extending global acceptance without requiring merchants to adopt new rails. Stripe confirmed in its keynote that Visa-backed stablecoin cards will be rolled out to dozens of countries. The partnership reframes stablecoins not as an alternative to card networks but as a complement. The two layers combine to make stablecoin spending seamless, global, and compliant. Momentum meets regulatory uncertainty Leduc acknowledged the difficulty of forecasting adoption timelines. “It’s hard to predict 12–18 months out,” she said, but noted how quickly expectations have shifted. A year ago, Visa-issued stablecoin cards were hypothetical; today, they are being rolled out globally. This acceleration, she argued, is itself the key signal of momentum. The regulatory environment remains uneven. Singapore’s Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has laid down one of the clearest frameworks for stablecoins. At Stripe Tour, Leduc shared a stage with MAS’s head of the financial infrastructure and AI office, Alan Lim, who remarked that stablecoins are now “impossible to ignore.” But in other APAC markets, from Indonesia to Japan, regulators are still defining their approach. For enterprises, this uncertainty complicates planning. Bridge’s compliance-first model is designed to mitigate this. By handling custody, AML, and KYC internally, Bridge ensures that enterprises adopting stablecoins are already aligned with best practices. This gives regulators greater confidence and allows businesses to innovate without exposure. Meanwhile, merchant sentiment is shifting. Stripe’s research found that 46% of APAC businesses expect to use stablecoins within two years, citing cross-border speed and cost as primary drivers. For Bridge, this validates its strategy of making stablecoins an invisible rail — merchants are adopting because of utility, not branding. Still, challenges remain. Consumer awareness is limited, enterprises are risk-averse, and regulatory fragmentation adds uncertainty. But Leduc’s message is that Bridge is designing for inevitability: if the benefits are clear and adoption pathways are compliant, stablecoins will scale. Making stablecoins disappear into global commerce Bridge’s future role is to disappear into the background of commerce. Its integration into Stripe’s accounts, its Visa card partnership, and its global coverage point to a model where stablecoins run silently beneath familiar consumer and merchant experiences. In the short term, adoption is likely to be driven by fintech wallets, SMEs, and cross-border platforms in emerging markets, where the benefits are most obvious. Over time, the same rails could support treasury functions for multinationals, programmable disbursements for platforms, and even agent-driven transactions in AI-native commerce. Regulatory challenges, consumer unfamiliarity, and uneven infrastructure will slow progress in some markets. But Bridge is betting that the combination of programmability, compliance, and invisibility will allow stablecoins to become a foundational layer of the internet economy. As Leduc framed it, Bridge’s mission is not to change how people shop but to change how money moves under the hood. If successful, it will not be remembered as a consumer brand but as the unseen infrastructure that made programmable payments a global reality.
