Privy’s CEO Henri Stern says Stripe intends to push its stablecoin card programs into over 100 nations by year-end. The company is placing a larger bet on stablecoins as a payment channel, aiming for global adoption. Stern oversees stablecoins and crypto across Stripe along with his Privy duties, where he runs the digital asset wallet infrastructure firm that Stripe acquired in 2025.
The bet is that digital dollars can sit alongside traditional currencies in everyday transactions. Stablecoin card spending reached about $1.2 billion last month, according to PaymentScan, and that volume has tripled in a year. That is still a fraction of the global card payments market, but it shows stablecoins are moving beyond crypto trading and cross-border transfers into everyday purchases.
Stern’s New Role
Last year, Stripe acquired Privy, and as a result, Stern took on an added role. He has since spoken with CoinDesk about his plans for growth.
Stripe’s stablecoin card programs are currently used by crypto exchange Kraken, fintech Ramp and payments app Morse. The expansion will extend that infrastructure to more countries, with those three companies already onboard as customers.
The $1.2 billion figure comes from PaymentScan, which tracks stablecoin activity. The triple-year growth shows how quickly the market is moving.
The Infrastructure Behind the Cards
Stern said Stripe has issued more than 400 million cards and processed hundreds of billions of dollars in card volume since 2018. The company’s stablecoin offering brings together its issuing business with Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in 2024.
A firm like Ramp might use stablecoins to move a corporate card into new countries rather than building banking and payments ties market by market. Kraken has tried letting customers spend from accounts where they already hold digital assets.
Privy, Bridge and Stripe’s existing card business together form a full route from issuing cards to handling payments.
The Modular Approach
Stern told CoinDesk that Stripe wants stablecoins to work as an additional choice within the tools businesses already rely on, instead of a separate crypto system they need to figure out. The company’s plan is to add stablecoins to its existing infrastructure.
He framed it as a balance between two groups of users. “We have to cater to folks who are here for stablecoins only, and we have to cater for millions of users of Stripe who are just using fiat rails,” he said.
The idea matches Stripe’s wider plan: stablecoins should work as an additional choice within products that companies already use, instead of a separate crypto system they need to figure out.
Tempo and Open USD
The payments company Stripe has been putting together the pieces for a bigger push into blockchain payments. It bought Bridge and Privy, then teamed up with the crypto investment firm Paradigm on Tempo, a blockchain built for handling payments. Stripe is also an original investor in Open Standard, which is building Open USD, a stablecoin meant to take on Circle’s USDT’s USDC and Tether’.
Zach Abrams, who helped found Bridge, has shifted his focus to lead Open Standard on a full-time basis.
Stern said those products are meant to work closely together without locking customers into Stripe’s ecosystem. “If you’re using Stripe, Bridge, Privy, Tempo, Open USD, it should be absolutely amazing, and it should feel like these systems were built to exist together,” he said.
The card business follows the same approach. Many programs currently use Circle’s USDC, but Stern said Stripe intends to remain “completely stablecoin agnostic, completely blockchain agnostic.”
Tokenized Deposits and DeFi
Stern noted that Stripe is looking into tokenized deposits, DeFi use cases, and taking on more digital assets as payments. He made clear, however, where the company’s main focus lies.
“By and far, the bulk of our work happens with stablecoins,” he said.
The anchor is the stablecoin cards, and everything else sits at the periphery as an experiment. That matches how the rest of the operation operates.
The Global Rollout
The goal of entering 100 countries is an ambitious one. Stripe has already built partnerships with customers across several markets, yet the plan calls for extending the same stablecoin card setup to dozens of new nations by the end of the year.
No word yet on which nations will join first. That detail remains undisclosed.
The direction is plain to see: Stripe views stablecoins as a payment infrastructure, not as something limited to a narrow market.
Why It Matters
Stablecoins are moving into regulated finance, and APAC is becoming a key proving ground. This report maps the region’s rules, use cases, and RLUSD’s role.
The rollout of Stripe’s product comes with a layer of context that matters deeply. The company is not simply putting a product into use across new regions. It is placing a product into markets where officials are watching closely how digital money moves from one place to another.
A digital dollar market now worth more than $300 billion is expanding rapidly, and stablecoin cards are among its quickest-growing segments. Last month’s spending of $1.2 billion via such cards marks the scale of that change.
The Bottom Line
Rolling out stablecoins across multiple countries is a sign of faith in the technology. Stripe is not merely discussing it; the company is putting it into practice, expanding its stablecoin offering to over 100 countries by the end of the year.
The modular design is the sensible move. Rather than committing to a particular stablecoin or blockchain, Stripe remains unaffiliated with either, keeping its choices flexible. This means it can partner with USDC, USDT or Open USD while avoiding the need to develop its own chain.
The rollout timeline is straightforward. Stripe is expanding to over 100 countries by year-end, and the company has not yet announced which countries will be added first.
| Stage | Target |
|---|---|
| Current | Stablecoin card programs in operation |
| Year-end | Stablecoin card programs in more than 100 countries |
Source material: “Stripe to expand stablecoin cards to over 100 countries by the end of the year,” CoinDesk.
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