Stripe acquires crypto wallet team! Valora joins Tempo blockchain project

Payment giant Stripe acquires the team of crypto wallet company Valora, just one day after Stripe launched a testnet for its blockchain project Tempo focused on stablecoins. According to Valora CEO Jackie Bona, after this acquisition, the Valora team will join Stripe and participate in the company’s blockchain initiatives.

Stripe accelerates stablecoin strategy with Valora team acquisition

Payment giant Stripe’s acquisition of crypto wallet company Valora’s team marks another significant move in Stripe’s crypto endeavors. According to Valora CEO Jackie Bona, after the acquisition, the Valora team will join Stripe and be involved in the company’s blockchain projects. This “acqui-hire” approach is common in the tech industry, where companies value the team’s expertise and experience over the product or technology itself.

“Stripe and we share the belief that stablecoins and cryptocurrencies can significantly expand global economic participation,” Bona stated. “By bringing the Valora team into Stripe, we can leverage our expertise in web3 and user-centric experiences to contribute to a platform with unparalleled influence.” This statement reveals a strategic alignment: Valora has the technical capability to build user-friendly wallet applications, while Stripe provides global payment infrastructure and a vast merchant network.

The specific tasks for the Valora team remain unclear, but Stripe will activate a team focused on global payments, digital wallets, and user-friendly mobile Web3 applications. This positioning indicates Stripe’s intent to integrate Valora’s mobile wallet expertise into its broader crypto strategy. Given the timing of the Tempo blockchain project launch, the Valora team is likely to participate in developing native wallet solutions or UI design for Tempo.

“Through this work, we have seen firsthand how stablecoins and crypto payment channels can expand economic opportunities. Over the past few months, it’s clear that joining one of the world’s leading financial infrastructure platforms like Stripe can accelerate this goal,” Bona said. This suggests that the Valora team believes that developing independently would be slower than leveraging Stripe’s platform, reflecting current market realities: small projects struggle to compete with resource-rich giants.

Valora Wallet: A multi-chain mobile crypto gateway

Founded in mid-2021, Valora was spun off from Celo developer group cLabs, and raised $20 million in Series A funding. From its inception, the wallet app received substantial backing, showing investor confidence in its potential. Valora is a mobile wallet supporting multiple assets across Celo, Ethereum, Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum.

Multi-chain support is a core competitive advantage for Valora. In today’s blockchain ecosystem, users often need to hold assets across different chains, but most wallets support only a single chain or limited options. Valora’s integration of five major chains offers a unified asset management interface, greatly lowering the barrier to entry. These chains include Layer-1 networks (Celo, Ethereum) and Layer-2 solutions (Base, Optimism, Arbitrum).

Beyond the wallet, the team also developed an open protocol launch platform tailored for Web3 applications, aimed at providing native mobile experiences. This launch platform (Launchpad) is another key differentiator for Valora; it’s not just an asset storage tool but also an entry point to Web3 dApps. Developers can quickly deploy mobile-optimized decentralized applications, and users can seamlessly access these within familiar mobile interfaces.

Three core advantages of the Valora Wallet

Multi-chain unified management: Supports 5 major chains, enabling users to manage assets across different chains without switching wallets.

Mobile-first design: Optimized for smartphones, with a simple, user-friendly interface suitable for mass adoption.

dApp launch platform: Provides tools for Web3 developers to deploy native mobile experiences.

The Valora app will continue to operate, but its management and future development will be handed over to cLabs. This arrangement ensures existing users are unaffected by the acquisition, and cLabs, as the developer of Celo, has the capacity to maintain and enhance the Valora wallet. The “product stays, team leaves” model is relatively uncommon in acquisitions; typically, companies acquire both product and team. Stripe’s decision to acquire only the team, not the product itself, indicates a focus on Valora’s development expertise and Web3 experience rather than the current wallet application.

Tempo blockchain: ambitions behind the $5 billion funding

Stripe’s relationship with crypto has been mixed, but in recent years, it has made significant progress in the blockchain space. Especially after partnering with crypto VC Paradigm to launch Tempo four months ago, momentum has grown. The network had already secured $5 billion in funding prior to its official launch—a rare scale in blockchain projects—highlighting market high expectations for Stripe’s entry into blockchain.

Stripe’s latest move coincides with the second day of the launch of the open testnet for Tempo, its Layer-1 blockchain developed in partnership with Paradigm. This timing is no coincidence, suggesting the acquisition of Valora’s team is part of the Tempo project’s strategic planning. During the testnet, one key feature showcased is that users can easily create stablecoins directly in their browsers, among other advantages.

The ability to create stablecoins within a browser is highly innovative. Traditionally, creating stablecoins requires deploying complex smart contracts and technical expertise—something only professional developers can handle. Tempo simplifies this process to a few clicks in the browser, drastically lowering the barrier to issuing stablecoins. This design aligns with Stripe’s mission to “make payments simple.”

As a Layer-1 blockchain, Tempo chooses to focus on stablecoins and payments, rather than becoming a general-purpose smart contract platform. Its vertical strategy aims to optimize for payment scenarios, offering higher transaction speeds, lower fees, and better user experience. With Stripe serving millions of merchants and handling billions of dollars in transactions annually, guiding these merchants onto the Tempo blockchain could generate substantial real-world usage.

Acquiring the Valora team provides Tempo with crucial mobile capabilities. The success of a blockchain ultimately depends on user adoption, and mobile is essential for reaching mass markets. The Valora team’s experience in building mobile-first wallets is key to scaling Tempo’s adoption. It is anticipated that Tempo will soon launch a native mobile wallet app led by former Valora team members.

Stripe’s evolving crypto strategy

Stripe’s relationship with crypto has fluctuated. It was among the first mainstream payment processors to accept Bitcoin in 2014, but ceased support in 2018 due to Bitcoin’s high volatility and slow transaction speeds. Recently, Stripe has reembraced crypto, especially stablecoins. In 2024, Stripe announced support for USDC payments from merchants and partnered with multiple blockchain projects.

This strategic shift reflects the maturation of the crypto market. Early Bitcoin payments faced issues like high volatility, long confirmation times, and unstable fees, making them less suitable for commerce. Stablecoins like USDC and USDT, pegged to fiat currencies, changed this by combining crypto’s fast settlement and low-cost cross-border transfers with price stability.

Stripe’s move to build its own blockchain rather than merely integrate existing chains demonstrates a long-term vision for crypto. By controlling the underlying infrastructure, Stripe can optimize for payments and profit across various segments—transaction fees, stablecoin issuance, and more. This vertical integration is akin to Apple controlling hardware and software for seamless experience.

Acquiring Valora’s team is a key part of this strategy. Stripe now has payment processing (core business), blockchain infrastructure (Tempo), wallet development expertise (Valora team), and a large merchant network. This comprehensive stack enables offering full crypto payment solutions—from accepting crypto payments, converting to fiat, to providing user-friendly wallets—creating a full ecosystem.