Meta is laying the groundwork to bring stablecoin payments directly into Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp by late 2026, reshaping how creators and users move money across its platforms under a new, more structured U.S. regulatory regime.
According to people familiar with the matter, the company has begun formally soliciting proposals from external crypto infrastructure providers to power the rollout. Stripe has emerged as the frontrunner, with its Bridge platform expected to sit at the center of the integration if the deal is finalized.
The move would mark Meta’s most serious return to digital money since the collapse of its high-profile Libra – later Diem – project. Launched in 2019, Libra was supposed to be a global digital currency backed by a basket of assets. Regulators quickly saw it as a private attempt to build something that looked uncomfortably close to a parallel monetary system. Intense political and regulatory pushback stalled the initiative, and by 2022 the project was effectively dead and its assets were sold off.
By 2025, Meta’s own leadership was acknowledging as much in private conversations. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told Stripe co‑founder John Collison that Diem was no longer on the table. Rather than trying to create a new global currency, Meta would need a different approach.
That new approach is deliberately more modest – and more conventional. Instead of issuing its own coin, Meta now plans to plug into existing stablecoin infrastructure, acting as a distribution and access layer rather than a direct issuer. Internally, the initiative is being framed as something Meta wants to run “at arm’s length,” keeping clear of the role that most alarmed regulators last time: controlling the money itself.
Stripe’s Bridge business is central to that strategy. Stripe acquired Bridge in October 2024 for roughly $1.1 billion, betting that regulated stablecoin rails would become critical plumbing for the next phase of digital payments. In February 2026, Bridge secured conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter, positioning it as a federally overseen intermediary for stablecoin-based services.
The timeline is striking. Stripe buys Bridge in late 2024. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison joins Meta’s board in April 2025. Bridge receives its conditional OCC nod in February 2026 – the same month Meta sends out its requests for proposals to infrastructure providers. While each step is formally separate, together they outline a coordinated path toward bringing regulated, bank-supervised stablecoin capabilities to one of the largest user bases in the world.
Stripe’s own data underscores why it is leaning in. In its 2025 annual letter, the company disclosed that Bridge’s transaction volume had quadrupled in a year as stablecoins began to see real-world use independent of crypto market booms and busts. The company described stablecoin payments as advancing “quietly and inexorably” as more businesses adopt them for everyday transactions rather than speculation.
For Meta, the core business problem is straightforward: paying creators internationally is still slow and expensive. A big chunk of the company’s payout flows are relatively small sums – around 100 dollars – sent across borders. Traditional wires, correspondent banking and foreign exchange spreads can eat a meaningful share of that amount, especially in emerging markets where banking infrastructure is limited or fees are high.
Across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta has access to roughly 3 billion people globally. Many of them either earn money directly through Meta’s creator programs or run small businesses that rely on the company’s platforms for customer acquisition and communication. For a creator in, say, Nigeria, Brazil or the Philippines, shaving a few dollars off every transfer and cutting settlement times from days to minutes can be the difference between a viable business and a hobby.
Stablecoins promise several advantages in this context. Because they are pegged to a reference asset like the U.S. dollar and settle over blockchain-based rails that can operate 24/7, they can enable near-instant cross-border value transfer with lower fees than traditional banking systems. For Meta, plugging into a compliant, regulated stablecoin infrastructure could drastically reduce the cost of sending hundreds of thousands of relatively small, cross-border payments every day.
There is also a strategic dimension. X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram have both been experimenting with payments and crypto integrations, moving closer to the “super app” model popularized in Asia, where messaging, social media, commerce and finance are deeply intertwined. Meta cannot afford to let its rivals define that next phase of the internet alone. A robust, regulated stablecoin layer gives Meta a way to add financial functionality with less friction and potentially less regulatory risk.
What makes this moment different from the Libra era is the regulatory backdrop. In July 2025, the GENIUS Act, signed by President Donald Trump, created the first dedicated federal legal framework for U.S. dollar stablecoin issuers. While technical details and implementation are still evolving, the law provides a clearer lane for companies that want to issue or intermediate stablecoins under federal supervision, in sharp contrast to the largely adversarial environment from 2019 through 2022.
Bridge’s pursuit of an OCC trust bank charter is emblematic of that shift. Rather than operating in a gray zone or under purely state-level regimes, Bridge is seeking to function as a nationally regulated institution. That structure is designed to reassure regulators, institutional partners and, crucially, large platforms like Meta that their stablecoin rails are embedded within a clear, enforceable compliance framework.
Despite the ambitious timeline – integration in the second half of 2026 – many operational details remain undecided. Insiders say Meta has not yet finalized which specific stablecoins it will support, how much of the underlying blockchain activity will be visible to end users, and whether it will offer an in‑app wallet experience under its own brand or via a white‑labeled partner.
One key architectural question is whether user transfers and payouts will happen directly on public blockchains or be largely abstracted away. From a user-experience perspective, Meta is likely to hide most of the crypto complexity: balances could be displayed in local currencies, and users might never see a wallet address or sign an on‑chain transaction. Under the hood, however, Bridge and other infrastructure providers would be reconciling and settling flows using stablecoins on one or more blockchains.
Custody and compliance are equally thorny. Meta will need a robust approach to holding and safeguarding user balances, performing KYC and AML checks where required, and monitoring flows for illicit activity. Partnering with a regulated trust bank entity like Bridge allows Meta to offload much of that responsibility to a specialist that already has the licenses, controls and risk systems in place.
Geography will also shape the rollout. Some insiders expect Meta to begin in a limited set of non‑U.S. markets, where creator demand for faster payouts is high and banking access is uneven, before expanding to larger markets including the United States. Pilot programs could help Meta test user behavior, regulatory reactions and technical performance at smaller scale before turning on payments for billions of people.
If successful, the impact will extend far beyond creator payouts. Once a stable, regulated digital dollar (or basket of major currencies) is flowing through Meta’s apps, new use cases become possible: peer‑to‑peer transfers in WhatsApp chats, micro‑tipping on Instagram, pay‑per‑view access to exclusive content on Facebook, cross‑border remittances routed through family group chats, and embedded payments for small businesses that advertise or sell via Meta’s platforms.
At the same time, Meta will have to navigate significant risks. Any misstep involving user funds, fraud, hacks or compliance failures could draw immediate regulatory scrutiny and public backlash, especially given the company’s history with data privacy and political content. Unlike a pure crypto startup, Meta operates in a spotlight where financial regulators, lawmakers and central banks will be watching closely.
There is also the broader monetary question. Even though Meta is no longer trying to create its own global currency, pushing hundreds of millions of users toward dollar‑linked or other fiat‑linked stablecoins could still concentrate power in private payment networks. Policymakers will be asking who ultimately controls the rails, what happens in a crisis, and how these systems interact with central bank digital currency experiments that are underway in multiple countries.
For Stripe, a deep integration with Meta would be a validation of its bet on regulated stablecoin infrastructure. It would position the company as the de facto backend for digital money across some of the most heavily used consumer applications on the planet, reinforcing its role not just as a payments processor but as a core piece of the internet’s financial operating system.
For the broader crypto industry, Meta’s pivot is equally symbolic. The company that once tried – and failed – to launch its own global coin is now returning as a large‑scale customer of regulated stablecoin ecosystems built by others. That reflects a maturation of the space: stablecoins are no longer an experiment led by pure‑play crypto firms alone, but are being woven into the fabric of mainstream financial and technology platforms.
However, the vision is far from guaranteed. Technical integration across three massive apps, each with its own legacy systems and regulatory footprint, is complex. User education will be key: people are accustomed to bank transfers and card payments, but not to the idea that what sits behind a “balance” in an app might be a tokenized claim on a reserve held by a trust bank.
Meta’s leadership will also have to balance monetization with adoption. Charging too much in fees could blunt the appeal of stablecoin payouts, especially for smaller creators. But subsidizing payments indefinitely may not be sustainable. The company will likely experiment with a mix of free services to drive engagement (such as low‑fee peer-to-peer transfers) and higher-margin offerings for businesses and power users.
If the rollout meets its 2026 target, it could become one of the most consequential real-world tests of stablecoins to date: not as speculative instruments or DeFi collateral, but as invisible infrastructure underneath everyday consumer apps. How seamlessly Meta can hide the crypto complexity while delivering tangible benefits – faster, cheaper, more reliable payments – will determine whether its second attempt at digital money succeeds where Libra did not.
As of now, both Meta and Stripe are keeping public commentary to a minimum. Behind the scenes, though, the pieces are falling into place: a supportive U.S. regulatory framework, a regulated trust-bank intermediary in Bridge, a massive user base hungry for better financial tools, and two of the world’s most influential technology and payments companies aligning around a shared vision for what digital dollars can do at global scale.