Stripe hires Native Markets' Drew Turchin to run its stablecoin card business

Stripe has hired Drew Turchin to lead its stablecoin-backed payment card business. Turchin joins from Native Markets, the crypto startup behind the USDH stablecoin, where he ran business development and partnerships, and was previously head of business development, partnerships and ventures at Uniswap Labs. He works alongside Henri Stern and Max Segall on Stripe's wider crypto effort.

The appointment builds on Stripe's USD 1.1bn acquisition of Bridge; stablecoin-linked card volume reached roughly USD 1.5bn a month, up from USD 250m a year earlier.

Stripe has assembled the pieces of a stablecoin stack, Bridge for issuance, Tempo for settlement, and is now staffing the part that touches an actual merchant, the card. Stablecoin cards run on the same scheme rails European acquirers already serve, so if this works it is a funding-source change inside existing acceptance rather than a new rail merchants must integrate, which is exactly the version that scales fastest and the one Visa and Mastercard have to price.

Whether the card programme launches in the EEA at all given MiCA, which BIN sponsor and issuer Stripe uses in Europe, and whether merchant-side pricing differs from a normal card transaction.

• paymentsdive.com