Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is planning stablecoin comeback in the second half of this year

Stripe's Bridge sees stablecoin volume quadruple as utility insulates from 'crypto winter'

The payments giant says Bridge, its stablecoin arm, saw its transaction volume sky-rocket through last year as stablecoin adoption is decoupling from crypto cycles.

• Meta sent out a request for product (RFP) to third-party firms to help administer stablecoin-based payments, according to sources.
• Stripe, which acquired stablecoin firm Bridge last year, was mentioned by one source as a likely candidate for piloting Meta’s stablecoin.
• Meta famously tried to introduce the Libra stablecoin, later renamed Diem, in 2019, only to be shut down amid regulatory scrutiny.

Meta, the U.S. tech giant helmed by Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, is aiming to enter the stablecoin space later this year, pending successful integration with a third-party firm to facilitate payments using the dollar-pegged token technology, according to three people familiar with the plans.

The tech giant, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram and has more than 3 billion users, wants to begin its stablecoin integration early in the second half of this year, said one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are not public. Meta is planning to integrate a vendor to help administer stablecoin-backed payments and implement a new wallet, the person said.

A second person said that Meta has sent out a request for product (RFP) to third-party firms and mentioned Stripe as a likely candidate for piloting Meta’s stablecoin.

Stripe, which acquired stablecoin specialist Bridge last year, is a long-time partner of Meta, and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison joined Meta's board of directors in April 2025.

Meta, Stripe, and Bridge were approached for comment, but none responded by the time of publication.

Meta introducing stablecoins would let it open payment rails to its massive user base while bypassing expensive traditional banking fees, and potentially position it as a global leader in "social commerce" and cross-border remittances.

The move would also put the tech giant in direct competition with the likes of Elon Musk's social media platform X as well as messaging platform Telegram, both of which are aiming to bring payments in-house by becoming "super apps." This was one of the original goals for the planned Libra project — allowing the social media company to tap its vast networks, including WhatsApp's peer-to-peer messaging service and Facebook and Instagram's network and commerce tools, for payments.

Regulatory shift

Meta famously tried to introduce the Libra stablecoin, later renamed Diem, in 2019, only to face strong headwinds due to a less favorable regulatory climate than today’s and a lingering reputational hit from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In the face of a pushback against the project by U.S. lawmakers, the Libra Association, as it was then called, scaled back its ambitions in 2020, pivoting to the development of a number of stablecoins pegged to different currencies, as opposed to the original plan of a global digital currency backed by a basket of national currencies.

In the end, Meta’s stablecoin never formally launched, and the project was shut down and its assets sold off in early 2022.

The regulatory climate in the U.S. today is quite different. There are several crypto regulatory regimes underway, including President Donald Trump's GENIUS Act, which, for the first time, established a legal foundation for U.S. stablecoin issuers and opened the floodgates for market entrants with new tokens. However, U.S. regulators are still only in the early stages of drafting the regulations governing issuers.

That said, the whole Libra/Diem experience has led Meta to prefer relying on a third-party stablecoin payments provider this time around, according to one of the sources.

“They want to do this, but at arm's length,” said the source.

• Stablecoin volume is decoupling from the crypto market cycles as real-world use expands, payments firm Stripe said in its annual letter.
• Bridge, the stablecoin platform acquired by Stripe, saw transaction volume more than quadruple in 2025, the letter said.
• Stablecoins, or digital versions of fiat money, are increasingly viewed as an alternative for cross-border payments with Facebook parent Meta said to be the latest to explore developing its own token.

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