Stripe has 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.”
Stripe which already uses specialized AI models for specific tasks such as preventing fraud, increasing authorization rates, or personalizing the checkout experience for individual buyers, has built the world’s first AI foundation model for payments trained on tens of billions of transactions.
The model 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 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.
Reinventing global money management with stablecoins
Stripe launched Stablecoin Financial Accounts, new money management capabilities powered by stablecoins accessible to businesses in 101 countries just three months after it completed its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge.
These will allow firms 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. 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, and Bridge partnered with Visa to 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 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.
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.
