Cryptos finally appeal to tech giants!

Digital payments fall into a new era. Apple, Google Cloud, Airbnb and X (ex-Twitter) discreetly chat with crypto companies to integrate stablecoins into their services. This strategic turn marks a clear tilting: the blockchain leaves the field of experimentation to become a tool of infrastructure coveted by the tech giants.

Big Tech explores stablecoins to optimize its costs

While Uber has announced that it wanted to accept cryptos as a means of payment, other technological giants, including Apple, Airbnb, X (ex-Twitter) and Google, have started confidential discussions with Crypto companies with the aim of integrating stablecoins into their payment systems.

This crypto approach essentially aims to improve the efficiency of cross -border payments and reduce dependence on traditional intermediaries. Companies consider the adoption of these cryptos as a means of reducing transaction costs and optimizing cross -border payments.

Among them, Airbnb actively explores the idea since the beginning of the year, in collaboration with companies specializing in the infrastructure of Stablecoins, and plans to bypass actors such as Visa or Mastercard.

Thus, current initiatives are available as follows:

• Airbnb is chatting with Worldpay, one of its payment providers, which has just announced a partnership with the Stablecoin BNVK infrastructure company.

• Apple, for its part, has been in talks since January 2025 with representatives of Circle, transmitter of the Stablecoin USDC, in particular with Matt Cavin, a senior framework of the company.

• Airbnb confirmed that “Crypto payments are not a priority for immediate integration, but that the company monitors developments in the sector”.

• At this stage, Apple and X are still silent, which underlines the still confidential dimension of these projects.

These discussions, although an early stage, bear witness to a growing strategic interest in stablecoins, not perceived as a speculative trend, but as a tool for modernizing financial infrastructure.

The desire to reduce intermediation costs seems to be the main engine of this mutation in gestation.

Already concrete experiments and an accelerated dynamic

While some companies like Airbnb and Apple are still at the exploratory stage, others like Google Cloud have already taken action. The company's Cloud branch confirmed that it has accepted stable -co -for payments for two of its customers, in this case in Pyusd, the stablecoin issued by Paypal in partnership with Paxos.

“We billed these customers as we usually do. They simply used stablecoins to pay their bills ”said Rich Widmann, head of the web3 strategy at Google Cloud.

These transactions have been integrated into the classic business accounts, without going through a specific division, which testifies to a desire for fluid and structured integration. Widmann even goes so far as to qualify this evolution as “Greater advance in payments from the Swift network”.

X, Elon Musk's platform, develops a more ambitious approach through its X Money application, designed as a versatile payment tool. After having formalized a partnership with Visa in January for the development of a digital portfolio, X now discusses with Stripe of a possible integration of stablecoins payments.

Negotiations, first led by Patrick Traughber (ex-responsible payments, now at World), are now taken up by Payam Abedi, a senior developer whose title on LinkedIn is “Financial services at X”. Again, the goal would be to add a peer-to-peer payment feature, inspired by services like Venmo, but carried by a Stablecoin architecture.

Through these initiatives, a capital issue emerges: the choice of stablecoin to integrate. Between the USDT (often criticized for its compliance practices), the USDC (touched by the uncertainties linked to the IPO of Circle), and Pyusd (still little adopted), the options remain limited.

Some actors even plan to create their own stablecoin, an idea already mentioned, but hampered by the oppositions of certain Democratic legislators in the United States. For Chris Ahn, partner at Haun Ventures and early investor in the Startup Bridge acquired by Stripe, the current dynamics are unprecedented: “Stablecoins have been around for a long time, but we now have the right pieces of the puzzle”.

The first concrete signals of an increased interest in Big Tech for Stablecoins may well announce a change in structural course in the approach of digital payments. As regulatory barriers soften, technological companies seek to take up the initiative, by focusing on tools perceived so far as marginal or risky. While some projects are still at the exploratory stage, the actions already initiated by Google Cloud or the X -shaped ambitions show that a new era opens.