Bridge is a stablecoin infrastructure company acquired by Stripe in a $1.1 billion deal announced October 21, 2024 and closed February 4, 2025. Bridge issues its own dollar stablecoin, USDB, and acts as the regulated issuer behind partner-branded stablecoins. The June 2, 2026 MoneyGram launch of MGUSD is the most recent example.
​

Bridge is a stablecoin issuance and orchestration platform that became a wholly owned Stripe subsidiary in February 2025. It issues USDB, its first dollar stablecoin, and operates an issuance-as-a-service model that lets partners launch named stablecoins on top of Bridge's regulatory, custody, and reserve plumbing rather than building their own.
​

Stripe announced the acquisition on October 21, 2024 at a reported $1.1 billion, roughly 5.5x Bridge's $200 million Series A valuation from August 2024 (per Architect Partners). The deal closed on February 4, 2025 and remains the largest single acquisition in Stripe's history. Bridge operates under the bridge.xyz domain and continues to staff its own engineering and compliance teams inside Stripe.
​

The acquisition added Stripe's distribution footprint, balance sheet, and product surface to Bridge's stablecoin stack. Bridge cards now route through Stripe Issuing, Bridge accounts plug into Stripe's stablecoin financial accounts in 101 countries, and partner-branded coins reach Stripe merchants through the same APIs that already process card payments.
​

The most visible product layer added post-acquisition is Open Issuance, the platform Stripe and Bridge unveiled in late 2025 that lets any business launch a stablecoin "in just a few days" with reserve management handled by BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, and Superstate, and cash held at Lead Bank. Phantom's CASH, the Hyperliquid native USDH (built by Native Markets), and coins from MetaMask, Dakota, Slash, Lava, and Takenos sit on the Open Issuance platform per the launch announcement. The Bridge-issued stablecoins move into a shared liquidity network so partners do not have to depend on a handful of incumbent issuers.
​

Bridge operates a regulated issuer model. Bridge holds the reserves, files the disclosures, and operates the mint and burn surface. Partners contribute brand, distribution, and customer relationships. The token contracts and chain-level deployment can be Bridge-controlled, partner-controlled, or run through a third-party smart-contract platform such as M0 depending on the partner's needs.
​

The reserve composition for USDB is 1:1 dollar backing held in cash and short-duration money market funds at BlackRock. Bridge passes the majority of the underlying treasury yield back to developers as a fee per the launch post. For partner-branded coins on Open Issuance, the same custodian roster (BlackRock, Fidelity, Superstate) handles reserves, and Lead Bank provides cash liquidity per the Open Issuance announcement. Bridge handles AML, sanctions screening, and compliance reporting so the partner does not stand up that program from scratch.
​

USDB is the dollar stablecoin Bridge issues directly under its own brand. It is backed 1:1 by cash and short-duration money market funds at BlackRock per the Bridge product page, and Bridge passes most of the underlying yield through to developers as a usage rebate. USDB launched alongside Stripe's expansion of stablecoin financial accounts into 101 countries.
​

USDB launched on May 7, 2025, the same day Stripe rolled out stablecoin financial accounts in 101 countries per Ledger Insights' coverage. The fee-rebate model differentiates USDB from USDC and USDT, where issuer-side interest accrues to the issuer rather than the developer. USDB is the reference design that Bridge's later issuance products generalize across partners. For more on the design, see PLACEHOLDER-what-is-usdb.
​

MGUSD is a dollar stablecoin issued by Bridge on behalf of MoneyGram. Per the June 2, 2026 launch release, MGUSD tokens are minted and burned using M0's smart contract infrastructure, deployed on the Stellar blockchain at launch, and held by MoneyGram in Fireblocks wallets that send to customer wallets.
​

The launch release identifies three infrastructure partners alongside Bridge:

MoneyGram reports over 60 million active customers across nearly 500,000 retail locations, with more than 70% of transactions now digital per the release. MGUSD integrates directly into the MoneyGram app inside a self-custodial wallet and launches in the U.S. market first, with plans to scale globally per the release. As of June 2026, limited public technical detail is available beyond what the launch release states. For more on the MGUSD partner stack, see PLACEHOLDER-moneygram-bridge-mgusd, PLACEHOLDER-moneygram-m0-mgusd, and PLACEHOLDER-moneygram-fireblocks-mgusd.
​

Bridge does not operate the entire stack alone. For MGUSD, Bridge acts as the regulated issuer, M0 supplies the smart-contract mint and burn layer, and Fireblocks provides MPC custody for MoneyGram's operational wallets. Stellar is the settlement chain. The roles are explicitly separated in the launch release rather than collapsed into one vendor.
​

This layered split is recurring in 2026 launches. The issuer handles money-transmission licensing, reserve attestation, and mint authorization. A smart-contract platform such as M0 handles the onchain token logic and chain deployment. A custodian such as Fireblocks handles operational key management for the brand partner's wallets. The settlement chain handles consensus and finality. For programmability of stablecoin infrastructure, see PLACEHOLDER-what-is-m0; for institutional custody patterns, see PLACEHOLDER-fireblocks-stablecoin-custody.
​

The named stablecoins Bridge issues differ along brand, chain, reserve custodian, and smart-contract provider. The table below summarizes the public facts as of June 2026.

Other coins on Bridge's Open Issuance platform include MetaMask, Dakota, Slash, Lava, and Takenos per Stripe's announcement. USDsui, Sui's native stablecoin, also issues via Open Issuance per CoinDesk's November 2025 coverage.
​

The MGUSD launch release describes Bridge as "the regulated, GENIUS Act-ready issuer". The phrase points to the regulatory framework the U.S. signed into law in 2025 that sets reserve, disclosure, and licensing rules for payment stablecoin issuers. Bridge positions its stack as already aligned with those rules ahead of full implementation.
​

The GENIUS Act was signed by President Trump on July 18, 2025 after the House passed it the prior day per the White House fact sheet. It requires 100% reserve backing in cash or short-term Treasuries, monthly public reserve disclosures, licensing as a permitted payment stablecoin issuer, Bank Secrecy Act compliance with AML and sanctions programs, and the technical capability to seize, freeze, or burn tokens on lawful order per the bill text. Implementation takes effect on the earlier of 18 months from enactment or 120 days after final regulator rules per the statute. The launch release's phrase is the partner's framing, not an independent verdict on regulatory status. For a deeper read, see /support/en/articles/15282223.
​

Bridge sits in a category of "issuance-as-a-service" platforms alongside Paxos, Brale, and Agora. Each handles reserves, licensing, and onchain mint-and-burn so brand partners can launch a named coin without building issuer infrastructure from scratch. Bridge differentiates on its Stripe distribution surface, its rebate model on USDB, and the Open Issuance shared liquidity network.
​

Paxos has issued partner-branded stablecoins for years, including PYUSD for PayPal and BUSD for Binance under prior arrangements. Brale issues a multi-partner network of smaller named coins. Agora issues AUSD and operates a similar partner-branded model. Bridge's Open Issuance announcement explicitly framed the network as a way to avoid "depending on a handful of incumbent issuers" per the launch post. Cross-issuer routing across these coins is a job for an intent-router; Eco Routes aggregates multiple settlement rails and partner stablecoins as an option within that broader category. For the issuer landscape view, see PLACEHOLDER-stablecoin-issuers and PLACEHOLDER-stablecoin-issuance-as-a-service.
​

Sources and methodology. MGUSD facts cite the PRNewswire launch release of June 2, 2026. Stripe acquisition figures cite Stripe's newsroom, Fortune, and CNBC. GENIUS Act references cite congress.gov S.1582 and the White House fact sheet. Open Issuance details cite the Stripe announcement. Figures refresh quarterly.
​