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Payments giant Stripe announced on December 10, 2025, that it has acquired the team behind Valora, a mobile-first crypto wallet focused on stablecoin payments and emerging markets, bringing expertise from the Celo ecosystem to bolster its blockchain initiatives just one day after launching the Tempo testnet.
The terms of the acqui-hire, which remain undisclosed, will see Valora’s full team, including founder and CEO Jackie Bona, join Stripe to advance its crypto strategy. On the other hand, the app’s intellectual property and ongoing development will return to Celo developer cLabs.
Valora launched in 2021 after becoming an independent company from cLabs with a $20 million Series A funding. It specializes in self-custody wallets supporting stablecoins across Celo, Ethereum, Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum, helping to facilitate simple P2P transfers for underserved regions like Africa.
Bona wrote in the announcement blog post: “Stripe shares our conviction that stablecoins and crypto can dramatically expand who gets to participate in the global economy… By bringing Valora’s team to Stripe, we’ll be able to contribute our expertise in web3 and user-first experiences to a platform with unparalleled reach.” A Stripe spokesperson confirmed the move adds “valuable expertise to our ongoing crypto efforts.”
News of the acquisition is coming on the back of Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider Bridge in October 2024 and the $70 million purchase of wallet developer Privy in June 2025. The founder of Selvlabs, Foobar, believes this signalled the company’s intent to assemble a full-stack buildout. In a lengthy analysis post on X, he pointed out that Stripe now has in its ensemble consumer wallets (Privy/Valora), issuance rails (Bridge), and settlement blockchain (Tempo with Paradigm).
Tempo Thoughts
Stripe is making a full-stack play from being the fintech middleman (passing point-of-sale data to settlement networks) into owning all three bits
– They bought Privy for 70m consumer wallets
– They bought Bridge for native stablecoin issuance
– They partnered w… pic.twitter.com/9EgOrRE6HX— foobar/ (@0xfoobar) September 6, 2025
Tempo has largely concentrated its efforts on building infrastructure for stablecoin adoption among large U.S.-focused enterprises and their domestic operations. With the Valora team acquisition now confirmed, it marks a clear expansion into emerging markets, leveraging Valora and Celo’s established strength in regions like Africa. Coinciding with Tempo’s public testnet launch, the company is showing off its steady progress toward mainnet and positioning the Stripe-backed project for a high-profile debut.
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