Stripe and Swift race to control the next generation of global payments infrastructure

Two of the world's biggest payment networks made major blockchain moves this week, highlighting what some have described as a growing competition between the two to control the infrastructure behind tokenized payments.

Swift said Tuesday it would expand a blockchain-based settlement network after completing pilot work with 17 global banks, and is now working with more than 40 financial institutions. Stripe followed immediately after with an unsolicited $53 billion bid for PayPal, a deal that would combine one of the world's largest merchant payment networks with one of the biggest consumer wallet businesses. PayPal’s board, according to a Reuters report, sees the takeover bid as undervaluing the company and facing regulatory and financing challenges.

Swift, Stripe and Paypal each sit at different ends of the global payments system. Swift connects more than 11,500 financial institutions and handles messaging for trillions of dollars in cross-border payments. Stripe processes hundreds of billions of dollars a year for millions of businesses. PayPal has more than 439 million active accounts and processed $1.79 trillion in 2025.

Taken together, the Swift announcement one end and the Stripe PayPal bid on the other, are part of a greater trend that who that banks, fintechs and payment companies are increasingly competing to build the infrastructure for the next generation of digital payments, whether through blockchain settlement networks, stablecoins or consumer payment platforms.

"It’s a race to control the next generation of global payment infrastructure," said Ilies Larbi, founder and CEO of Ouinex.

A Stripe-PayPal combination would allow more transactions to move across its own network, reducing dependency on intermediaries like Visa or Mastercard, apart from access to the latter’s consumer base. PayPal also has a Paxos-based USD stablecoin which serves as a reliable bridget between traditional finance and digital assets.

Jason Li, co-founder of Solayer and CEO of MPCVault, said Stripe’s proposed PayPal acquisition shows the value now lies in reaching consumers, not issuing another stablecoin.

"Getting 400 million people to actually use a stablecoin is what costs $53 billion," Li said. "Stripe already has the issuer, the chain and the merchant side. What it's buying is the consumer wallet."

Stripe’s proposed acquisition of PayPal also makes financial sense beyond stablecoins, Rob Hadick, general partner at Dragonfly, told CoinDesk via Telegram.

"Both Stripe and PayPal do approximately the same amount of payment volume, but Stripe has about one-fifth the net revenue," Hadick said. "From a financial perspective, this is obviously accretive, and it helps them connect their merchant processing business, which is at risk of being commoditized, with a broad subset of PayPal's more than 400 million accounts."

Hadick also cautioned that executing a deal of that size would be difficult. "M&A integration in something of this size is incredibly hard," he said.

Eric Queathem, CEO of Velocity, said the acquisition would also give Stripe access to one of the world’s largest consumer payments ecosystems, providing a platform to expand beyond merchant payments.