(Bloomberg) -- Stripe Inc. is bringing back crypto payments by allowing merchants using its platform to accept stablecoins for online transactions. 

“There’s been a lot of technical improvements happening in crypto,” John Collison, co-founder and president said Thursday at the payments processing company’s annual conference in San Francisco. The option should be available this summer, he said. 

Transaction speeds have increased in crypto, while fees have gone down as crypto finds “real utility,” according to Collison. He said that stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies pegged to a fixed asset like the dollar, are becoming “more stable” and demonstrated a crypto payment on Stripe using Circle’s USDC token during his presentation. Stablecoins have continued to gain traction in crypto and fintech, with PayPal Holdings Inc. introducing its PYUSD stablecoin last year.

Stripe enabled Bitcoin payments about 10 years ago, with Collison noting that the experience back then was “pretty terrible.” The service ended in 2018 in part due to a lack of customer demand. 

The private company also experimented with allowing creators to get paid in crypto on Twitter and introduced a crypto on-ramp service in 2022 that allows businesses to give their customers a way to exchange fiat money for cryptocurrencies. The company counts crypto platform Blockchain.com, digital wallet provider MetaMask and nonfungible token marketplace Magic Eden among its clients. 

Stripe announced Wednesday at the conference that companies will no longer be required to process payments with Stripe in order to use its other products. 

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.