Stripe Accelerates the Utility of AI and Stablecoins with Major Launches

Today, programmable financial services company Stripe announced new products designed to help businesses harness AI and stablecoins to accelerate their growth. Stripe serves the world’s largest and fastest-growing companies, including half of the Fortune 100 and 78% of the Forbes AI 50. Last year, businesses on Stripe processed $1.4 trillion in total payment volume—up 38% from 2023 and equivalent to around 1.3% of global GDP. In aggregate, the revenue that businesses process on Stripe is growing seven times faster than that of companies in the S&P 500. 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.” Investing in AI to fuel growth for businesses Stripe has a long history of using specialized AI models, each optimized for a specific task like preventing fraud, increasing authorization rates, or personalizing the checkout experience for individual buyers. 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. Early results thwarting card testing attacks demonstrate the effectiveness of the new Payments Foundation Model. With its previous models, Stripe gradually reduced card testing by 80% over two years. By applying the new foundation model, Stripe increased its detection rate for attacks on large businesses by 64% practically overnight. Reinventing global money management with stablecoins 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. Over the past year, stablecoin transaction volumes have surged over 50%. Because stablecoins make it dramatically faster and cheaper to move money internationally, many of the world’s largest companies are turning to Stripe to help assemble their stablecoin strategies. But a challenge remains: making it possible to spend stablecoins at businesses that only accept fiat currencies. To solve this, last week, Bridge partnered with Visa on the first-ever global card issuing product that will make stablecoin balances as easy to spend as fiat currency. Fintechs like Ramp, Squads, and Airtm will be able to issue Visa cards linked to stablecoin wallets in dozens of countries. When a cardholder makes a purchase, Bridge deducts the funds from their stablecoin balance and converts them into fiat, enabling the merchant to get paid in their local currency as they would with any other transaction. These stablecoin cards can be used at any of the 150 million merchants around the world that accept Visa today. Curtailing the FX tax on global trade 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. “We’re building programmable financial services, to make money as easy to manipulate and manage with code as data is,” said Will Gaybrick, Stripe’s president of product and business. “Across dozens of new launches we unveiled today, we’re putting AI and stablecoins to accelerate our users’ growth.” Deepening partnerships with the world’s largest companies Stripe already works with half of the Fortune 100 and continues to attract many of the world’s largest companies. 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 6 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.Large companies often need to process payments with multiple providers, which can be challenging: there’s no unified view and no easy way to compare performance to ensure they’re routing payments in the best way possible. To solve this, Stripe launched Orchestration, which helps businesses set up, manage, and optimize performance across multiple payment providers—all from the Stripe Dashboard.“For enterprises with complex payments architecture, orchestration is essential. Being able to manage and optimize performance across payment providers in one place gives businesses a level of control and visibility that could unlock meaningful performance gains,” said Jordan McKee, head of fintech research at S&P Global Market Intelligence. Upgrading the entire Stripe platform with 60+ launches 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 dedicated platform dashboards.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.Read more about the full set of announcements on the Stripe blog.The post Stripe Accelerates the Utility of AI and Stablecoins with Major Launches appeared first on FF News | Fintech Finance.