Today, programmable financial services company Stripe announced new products designed to help businesses harness AI and stablecoins to accelerate their growth.
At its annual user event, Sessions, Stripe launched the world’s first AI foundation model for payments and unveiled a major expansion of its money management capabilities, including stablecoin-powered accounts.
“There are not one, but two, gale-force tailwinds, well off the Beaufort scale, dramatically reshaping the economic landscape around us: AI and stablecoins,” said Patrick Collison, Stripe cofounder and CEO. “Our job is to pull these technologies forward so businesses on Stripe can benefit from them right away.”
To help its users grow even faster, Stripe announced today it has built the world’s first AI foundation model for payments. Stripe’s Payments Foundation Model is trained on tens of billions of transactions, and captures hundreds of subtle signals about each payment that specialized models can’t. It will be deployed across Stripe’s payments suite to unlock additional performance improvements that were not previously possible.
Stripe launched Stablecoin Financial Accounts, new money management capabilities powered by stablecoins, which will be accessible to businesses in 101 countries. This comes just three months after Stripe completed its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge.
With these new accounts, businesses will be able to hold a balance in stablecoins, receive funds on both crypto and fiat rails (like ACH and SEPA), and send stablecoins almost anywhere in the world. These accounts will allow entrepreneurs in countries with volatile currencies to hedge against inflation and more easily access the global economy. Stripe will start by supporting two dollar-denominated stablecoins—USDC and Bridge’s USDB—and plans to add others over time.
Alongside Stablecoin Financial Accounts, Stripe also announced the ability for businesses to hold and manage balances in multiple currencies—starting with USD, EUR, and GBP—in their existing Stripe account. A business will be able to store money in the currency in which it’s received, convert between currencies, and create virtual and physical cards for each currency.
Among other benefits, this new multicurrency feature will help multinational companies avoid the unnecessary FX fees they often incur moving money between countries.
For example, a US-based retailer with stores in London will now be able to accept payments from British customers in GBP; hold a GBP balance in their Stripe account (alongside a separate USD balance from sales to American customers); issue cards so UK employees can buy things in GBP; and pay UK-based suppliers in GBP—all without incurring any FX fees.
These multicurrency balances will first be available for businesses in the US and the UK, before rolling out to the Eurozone later this year.
Today, Stripe announced that NVIDIA is now using Stripe Billing to power subscriptions for its cloud gaming service, GeForce Now. It typically takes many months for a business to complete a large migration, but NVIDIA migrated their entire subscriber base to Stripe Billing in just six weeks, making it the fastest-ever migration to Stripe Billing.
PepsiCo is also expanding its partnership with Stripe to help modernize payments for restaurants, bars, and other small businesses in the US. Until recently, store managers paid for deliveries by handing paper checks to PepsiCo delivery drivers. With Stripe, PepsiCo has launched a new website and app, which allows customers to order and pay for products online.
In addition to applying AI and stablecoins to accelerate its users’ growth, Stripe continued to expand and enhance its suite of payments, revenue, and embedded finance tools. Among the 60+ launches Stripe announced:
- Support for 25 new payment methods, including UPI and PIX, bringing its total to over 125 payment methods.
- Klarna will be available on Stripe’s consumer payments product Link this summer, reducing the friction for first-time Klarna users.
- Stripe Terminal can now be used with third-party hardware, starting with Verifone.
- Managed Payments, a new merchant of record offering that gives businesses everything they need to enter new markets by taking care of global taxes, fraud prevention, dispute management, fulfillment, and more on their behalf.
- Smart Disputes, which uses AI to automate disputes handling, and helps companies win 13% more chargebacks.
- Radar support for ACH and SEPA is now available for all businesses on Stripe, and is reducing fraud rates for those payment methods by an average of 20% and 42%, respectively.
- Upgrades to usage-based billing, including the ability to ingest up to 100,000 events per second.
- Stripe Tax is now available in 102 countries, up from 57 last year, and automation of the entire tax lifecycle from monitoring and registering, to collecting and filing.
- New tools specifically for platforms, including enhanced fraud protection and a dedicated platform dashboard.
- Businesses can now create fully managed credit card issuing programs for consumers on Stripe.
- Global Payouts, which allows businesses to pay out to customers, contractors, and other third parties with just an email address.
