Dive Brief:

• Payments software startup Stripe, which was valued at $95 billion last year, said in a press release last week that Blockchain.com, with 37 million users worldwide, has become a new customer.
• Stripe will aid London-based Blockchain.com in improving its electronic acceptance of fiat payments for crypto as the crypto company seeks further international expansion, with reduced fraud, according to the March 17 release. Stripe has dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin.
• "Stripe will help Blockchain.com address challenges common to crypto purchases: fluctuating payment acceptance rates, volatile reliability, and frustrating user experiences," the release said.

Dive Insight:

The partnership will focus on the U.S. and European markets at first, but Blockchain.com expects to tap the new Stripe services in additional markets as well, with a newly simplified means of offering services in local currencies, according to a Stripe website post.

"This requires ensuring investors around the world can onboard to the wallet and exchange using their preferred local payment methods," the post said. "With Stripe, adding new payment methods can be as easy as a click of a button."

Stripe's equity investments last year made it the most valuable startup in Silicon Valley. And its new client isn't doing too shabby on the fundraising front either. Blockchain.com landed $420 million in equity investments in just the first quarter last year, giving it a $5.2 billion valuation in March.

A run-up in the value of the world's most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, drew a lot of investor attention last year, but the interest has cooled somewhat this year after the price of bitcoin has dropped by nearly a third and regulatory attention regarding the risks of such digital alternatives has increased.

"Many crypto platform checkouts are challenged by low payment acceptance rates, volatile reliability, and frustrating user experiences, all of which erode user trust and discourage new users from signing up," Stripe said in the web post. "Blockchain.com was no exception." 

Still, other incumbent payments companies, including FIS and card giant Visa, have been finding new ways to incorporate crypto into payments systems, and consumers have persisted in seeking to hold the digital currencies.

Blockchain.com's senior product marketing manager, Justin Dorfman, credited Stripe with helping the company create a more frictionless process for buying crypto on its system. "We’ve focused on making the process of exchanging fiat for crypto as simple as possible, and Stripe is playing a huge role in helping us make that happen," he said in the post.

Stripe President John Collison recently tweeted about his company's rising connection to the crypto world, touting how Stripe now supports crypto exchanges, wallets and payouts, among other crypto services.

The new Stripe tie will also soon allow Blockchain.com to accept payments for crypto through Google Pay and Apple Pay, the release said. Blockchain.com is also using a Stripe machine learning service to reduce fraud.