Stripe and Crypto.com announced a partnership on January 6 that brings crypto balances one step closer to everyday spending: Crypto.com Pay will become a checkout option across millions of Stripe-powered merchants, and Crypto.com will rely on Stripe’s payment-acquiring services for card purchases.

Under the new integration, shoppers who hold funds on Crypto.com can pick “Crypto.com Pay” at participating checkout pages backed by Stripe’s Optimized Checkout suite, think Stripe Checkout or the Payment Element, then scan a QR code and confirm the payment inside the Crypto.com app.

The experience is designed to feel like any other digital wallet checkout: simple, quick and native to the merchant’s existing payment flow. For merchants, Stripe will convert the crypto payment into the business’s preferred local currency and deposit it into their merchant balance, meaning payouts and reconciliation happen alongside other payment types.

Crypto.com is also tapping Stripe behind the scenes as an acquirer, using Stripe’s infrastructure to let customers buy crypto with credit and debit cards and to process Crypto.com-branded card transactions in the U.S. The move aims to streamline card processing for Crypto.com as it scales its credit and debit card offerings.

According to Crypto.com, the company is the first crypto platform to be integrated with Stripe for direct payments from a customer balance, a milestone the firm says will broaden the utility of crypto for real-world purchases. Executives from Crypto.com framed the deal as a practical step toward wider crypto adoption.

Joe Anzures, Crypto.com’s EVP of Payments and General Manager for the Americas, described the collaboration as “a game-changer for the crypto industry,” noting that Stripe’s merchant reach helps bridge the gap between holding crypto and spending it in everyday life.

“Our goal has always been to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency,” said Anzures. “With Stripe’s technology and trust in the payments space, we’re able to offer our users unprecedented access to spend their crypto in the real world, furthering adoption and utility of digital currencies.”

Stripe, for its part, positions the integration as another way to give merchants more payment choices while reducing friction and reconciliation work. The initial rollout will begin in the United States in January 2026, with plans to expand to additional markets thereafter.

For merchants who want to experiment, the integration appears straightforward: if they already use Stripe’s prebuilt checkout tools, Crypto.com Pay can show up as just another payment method. That could make accepting crypto less of an engineering project and more of a settings toggle for many retailers.

Industry observers will likely watch how quickly consumers adopt the option and whether payouts and chargeback handling behave as smoothly in practice as they do on paper. For Crypto.com, the partnership shows a familiar ambition, “cryptocurrency in every wallet,” while giving Stripe another foothold in the evolving payments landscape where crypto and fiat increasingly intersect.

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