STRIPE, the payments company founded by billionaire brothers Patrick and John Collison, is in advanced talks to acquire venture capital-backed fintech platform Bridge.
Stripe is in talks to acquire the San Antonio, Texas-based company, according to sources familiar with the discussions who asked not to be identified sharing private information. No final decision has been made, the sources said, and both sides could still walk away from the deal.
A Stripe representative declined to comment. Bridge CEO Zach Abrams did not respond to several emails seeking comment.
Bridge’s platform is designed to enable businesses to create, store, send and accept stablecoins such as Tether’s USDT and Circle’s UDSC. The startup has raised a total of $58 million in funding, Fortune reported in August. Their investors include Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, Index and Haun Ventures.
Sequoia led Bridge’s latest fundraising, a US$40 million Series A round. In a blog post published at the time, the venture capital firm praised the market opportunity for stablecoins created in part by initiatives from companies such as Stripe.
A tie-up would fuel Stripe’s recent moves toward stablecoins, an increasingly popular alternative payment mechanism. Last week, Stripe announced that it would once again allow US merchants to accept crypto payments in the form of USDC, ending a six-year hiatus in processing digital tokens.
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Earlier this month, Visa announced a new platform allowing banks to issue their own tokens backed by fiat currencies, including stablecoins. Other fintech companies, including Robinhood Markets and Revolut, are considering launching their own stablecoins.
Abrams co-founded Bridge less than two years ago with Sean Yu, who serves as chief technology officer. The couple sold a previous startup, Evenly, to Square. Abrams is a veteran of crypto exchange Coinbase and merchant banking startup Brex; Yu’s experience includes time spent at Airbnb and Coinbase.
While Stripe has long been seen as a leading IPO candidate in the fintech space, the company’s founders have emphasized that they are in no rush to go public.
Earlier this year, Stripe and several of its investors agreed to buy back more than $1 billion in stock from its employees, a move that valued the company at $65 billion. Its peak valuation of nearly $100 billion was reached in 2021. BLOOMBERG