Stripe plans to roll out stablecoin-backed card programs to more than 100 countries by year-end, wagering that tokenized dollars can graduate from a trading instrument into a mainstream consumer payment rail.

The expansion, disclosed to CoinDesk, comes as spending on stablecoin cards reached roughly $1.2 billion last month — three times the volume recorded a year earlier, according to PaymentScan figures cited by Stripe. The tally remains a sliver of global card volume but marks the fastest-growing use case for the $300 billion-plus stablecoin market outside crypto trading and remittances.

Henri Stern, co-founder and CEO of crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, which Stripe acquired in 2025, has taken on an additional role overseeing stablecoins and crypto across Stripe's wider operations. In his expanded capacity, Stern coordinates products spanning Stripe's issuing, processing and treasury businesses.

What does the expansion actually cover?

Current Stripe stablecoin card customers include crypto exchange Kraken, fintech Ramp and payments app Morse. The 100-country target represents Stripe's first formal geographic ceiling on the product line.

Stern framed the rollout as an extension of Stripe's existing card franchise, not a parallel crypto stack. "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.

Stripe has issued more than 400 million cards and processed hundreds of billions of dollars in card volume since 2018. The stablecoin offering layers that issuing infrastructure onto Bridge, the stablecoin payments company Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in 2024.

How does Stripe position itself against USDC and USDT?

Stripe intends to remain asset- and chain-neutral. "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," Stern said. "A huge part of crypto's value is the fact that it's built on an open and modular stack, and we want to make sure that our users get to mix and match their stack in exactly the way they want."

Most existing programs run on Circle's USDC. Stripe has also placed a founding bet on Open Standard, the company building Open USD, a dollar stablecoin designed to challenge USDC and Tether's USDT. Zach Abrams, a Bridge co-founder, recently moved to run Open Standard full-time.

What else is Stripe building in blockchain?

Stripe is jointly developing Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain, with crypto investment firm Paradigm. Separately, Stern confirmed that Stripe is exploring tokenized deposits, decentralized finance use cases and broader digital-asset acceptance.

"By and far, the bulk of our work happens with stablecoins," he said.

That concentration maps to where regulators have already opened bank-licensed corridors and where Stripe's existing payment-institution registrations apply. Card rails also offer merchants and fintechs infrastructure they already understand, lowering the integration cost relative to direct stablecoin-to-merchant settlement.

Why does the geographic push matter commercially?

For corporate cards especially, a 100-country footprint could let a customer like Ramp extend its spend management product without rebuilding banking and licensed payments corridors in every market. Kraken, for its part, has explored letting users spend directly from on-chain balances.

The operational consequence for Stripe: its issuing arm — which already settles through Visa and Mastercard networks — would handle stablecoin-funded card transactions at scale for the first time, putting the company in direct competition with card-on-crypto programs operated by exchanges, fintechs and neobanks.

The rollout will gauge whether stablecoins can convert from a treasury and trading tool into a card-spending primitive for ordinary consumers ahead of the federal stablecoin licensing framework expected to be finalized later this year.