A New Era for Fast and Customizable Stablecoin Creation

Stripe just dropped a bombshell for the crypto world: a new tool called Open Issuance that lets any business launch its own stablecoin “with just a few lines of code.”

For years, creating a stablecoin has been reserved for highly specialized crypto firms with deep technical and regulatory expertise. Now, Stripe is promising to smash those barriers, enabling mainstream companies to mint, manage, and deploy their own digital currencies faster than ever.

The launch is more than a technical upgrade — it’s a signal that stablecoins are moving from niche crypto products to mass-market financial infrastructure. And Stripe wants to be the company powering that transition.

How It Works: Stablecoins Without the Headaches

With Open Issuance, businesses can mint and burn tokens at will, choose how to balance reserves between cash and U.S. Treasuries, and select from an elite roster of asset managers including BlackRock, Fidelity, and crypto-native Superstate.

This flexibility is meant to solve one of the biggest headaches for companies trying to launch stablecoins in-house: reserve management, compliance, and liquidity risks. Traditionally, building a stablecoin required companies to hire teams of engineers, lawyers, and compliance officers — and still risk regulatory missteps.

Stripe is betting that by bundling all of that complexity into an API, companies can skip the back-office nightmare and focus instead on how to use stablecoins for real business needs, from payments to loyalty programs.

Backing the new tool is Bridge, the $1.1 billion stablecoin infrastructure firm Stripe acquired in 2024. That acquisition now looks like a masterstroke, giving Stripe the technology to leapfrog competitors and package stablecoin issuance as a plug-and-play service.

The timing couldn’t be better. Following the GENIUS Act, which was signed into law in July by the Trump administration, stablecoins have moved from regulatory gray zones into a legally defined space. The market has already surged to $300 billion, with U.S. Treasury projections suggesting it could hit $2 trillion by 2028.

This growth hasn’t gone unnoticed by Wall Street. Financial giants are pouring into the space, eager to claim a slice of what could become the backbone of digital commerce. For Stripe, already embedded in millions of businesses worldwide, Open Issuance offers a direct channel into that boom.

Stripe is also reportedly seeking a federal banking charter and a New York trust license, positioning itself as one of the few players able to meet the toughest regulatory requirements for stablecoin issuers.

One of Stripe’s biggest selling points is speed. The company claims businesses using Open Issuance could go from concept to live stablecoin in just days instead of months or years.

The implications for customer engagement are massive. Brands could roll out tokenized rewards programs, offer stablecoin cashback, or create custom loyalty ecosystems — all without touching the messy backend of reserve accounting. As Stripe puts it:

“Businesses can build on top of stablecoins that they customize and control, so that the benefits of this important technology flow directly to the people and businesses using them.”

That promise — faster, cheaper, safer stablecoin issuance — could be what finally pushes digital dollars into the mainstream.

Greater Collaboration Between Businesses And Crypto Firms

Stripe isn’t alone in this push. Binance recently rolled out a “crypto-as-a-service” platform, giving banks, brokerages, and exchanges direct access to its spot and futures markets, liquidity pools, custody solutions, and compliance tools. Companies don’t need to build infrastructure “from the ground up” — they simply tap into Binance’s pipes.

Coinbase launched a similar service in June, signaling that the future of crypto adoption may come less from retail traders and more from traditional businesses outsourcing blockchain infrastructure to the big players.

Stripe’s Open Issuance neatly fits into this trend. Rather than competing with the likes of Binance or Coinbase, it’s carving out the stablecoin niche — one that could prove just as lucrative as trading markets.

But Stripe isn’t stopping at stablecoins. The company also unveiled its Agentic Commerce Protocol, developed with OpenAI, designed to let merchants sell directly through AI-powered agents.

Think of it as chatbots on steroids. These agents could negotiate purchases, recommend products, and execute payments automatically — all while ensuring businesses keep full control over their brand identity and customer relationships. Combined with stablecoins, the model could enable onchain, AI-driven commerce at a global scale.

The vision aligns with moves across the industry. Circle recently partnered with Crossmint to expand USDC payments for AI agents, while Coinbase developers predict that AI agents could become Ethereum’s biggest power users in the near future. If that proves true, Stripe is positioning itself at the intersection of AI and payments before the wave fully hits.

Stripe Is Turning Stablecoins Into the New SaaS

Stripe’s latest move feels less like a payments upgrade and more like a paradigm shift. By reducing stablecoin creation to a few lines of code, it’s essentially turning money itself into Software-as-a-Service.

This could unleash a flood of innovation — not just from big banks and tech giants, but also from startups, retailers, and even creators who want custom tokens for their communities.

Still, questions remain. Will regulators trust Stripe’s “outsourced” compliance model? Will businesses feel comfortable letting a third-party API manage their digital currency reserves? And most importantly — will end users embrace stablecoins if they come branded by their favorite retail or online platform?

Here at Coinlive, we believe Open Issuance is one of the most ambitious bets Stripe has ever made. If it works, it could make stablecoins as common as credit cards — and cement Stripe as the default infrastructure for the AI-powered, tokenized economy of the 2030s.