Meta has begun paying select creators in USDC stablecoin on Solana and Polygon via Stripe, marking Facebook’s first crypto payout program four years after the company shut down its Libra project under regulatory pressure.
Summary
- Meta USDC creator payouts launched April 29 for select creators in Colombia and the Philippines, with eligible users able to link a MetaMask, Phantom, or Binance wallet and receive earnings in Circle’s USDC directly.
- Stripe handles the backend and provides tax reporting for the transactions. Meta emphasized it is not issuing its own stablecoin and is using Circle’s existing USDC, which has a market cap exceeding $77 billion.
- The move reverses Meta’s retreat from crypto payments: Libra was launched in 2019, rebranded as Diem, and shut down entirely in 2022 after regulators blocked every path to launch.
Meta USDC creator payouts went live on April 29 when the company quietly updated its support page to show that eligible creators in Colombia and the Philippines can now receive earnings in USDC on either Solana or Polygon. Yahoo Finance reported that Stripe, which acquired stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge for $1.1 billion in late 2024, is the payments provider handling transactions and generating crypto-related tax documents for creators. Meta explicitly told reporters it is “not issuing a Meta stablecoin” and is instead using Circle’s USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market cap.
As crypto.news reported, the rollout aligns with Meta’s plans disclosed in February to enter the stablecoin payments space through third-party infrastructure, with Stripe emerging as the leading partner after an RFP process. The choice of Solana is significant: Solana processes transactions in roughly 400 milliseconds with fees under $0.001, and as crypto.news documented, Circle minted over $10.5 billion USDC on Solana in a single month earlier in 2026, making it already the leading chain for USDC settlement volume ahead of Ethereum. Meta paid content creators nearly $3 billion in 2025, meaning even a partial conversion to stablecoin payouts would place meaningful volume onto Solana and Polygon.
The strategic context is the opposite of Libra. As crypto.news tracked, Meta’s 2019 Libra project failed because it tried to issue its own currency, control the wallet, and run the settlement network, giving regulators a single point to block. The 2026 approach makes Meta a customer rather than an issuer: Circle issues USDC, Stripe moves the money, and Solana and Polygon process the transactions. Meta provides the distribution through its more than 3 billion users across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
