A broader payments surface area

Stripe used its first in-person user conference since 2019 to roll out updates across payments, embedded finance, and revenue automation. The company’s pitch to attendees centered on three themes: helping businesses grow revenue through its payments stack, getting platforms and fintechs to market faster with embedded finance, and reducing time spent on finance and developer workflows.

On the payments side, the Payment Element now supports more than 40 payment methods. Affirm and Klarna buy now, pay later options have expanded to more countries, and a new Payment Method Messaging Element makes it easier to surface BNPL options before checkout. Automatic Currency Conversion is available for 30 countries, enabling payment methods that require local currency presentment. Payment Links can now be generated from the Stripe Dashboard iOS App and support embeddable buy buttons.

Unified and optimized payments

For in-person payments, Stripe introduced the Reader S700, an Android-based smart reader designed by Stripe that works for both handheld and countertop use. Tap to Pay is supported on compatible mobile devices, allowing merchants to accept in-person payments without additional hardware.

Several improvements target payment performance. The Enhanced Issuer Network is designed to reduce fraud and boost authorization rates. Network tokens are supported for Visa and Mastercard volume across all Stripe markets, and a real-time card account updater reduces declines for those networks globally. Asynchronous Capture cuts latency by 300 to 800 milliseconds, and regional debit network routing access is now available in the US, Canada, France, and Australia.

Faster platforms and embedded finance

For platforms using Connect, new embedded components allow prebuilt functionality such as onboarding flows and dashboards to be added natively with a few lines of code. Stripe Apps for Platforms will soon let Connect platforms embed apps like Xero directly into their product.

In embedded finance, a new in-dashboard onboarding flow for Capital’s no-code integration lets platforms sign a deal and deliver an offer in days, with no engineering time or support from the Capital team. Issuing card network support in the US now includes Mastercard in addition to Visa.

New tools for Instant Payouts aim to simplify starting and managing a payout program, with faster integration, streamlined monetization, and no-code build options.

Revenue and finance automation

Stripe says more than 250,000 companies now use its revenue and finance tools, and automated revenue recovery earned businesses an extra $3.8 billion in 2022.

  • Billing and invoicing: Subscription schedules can be set in the Dashboard, allowing users to model subscriptions with varied trial and pricing periods. New sales-led billing tools automate sales team workflows. Integrations for Salesforce’s Flow Builder and Salesforce CPQ let sales teams use Stripe within Salesforce with low or no code. No-code revenue recovery automations let finance teams create custom triggers and actions.
  • Tax: The new Stripe Tax API allows managing tax on any transaction, including those not processed by Stripe, across 40+ countries. Stripe Tax also supports location-specific requirements like Chicago Lease Tax, the EU Import One Stop Shop (IOSS), and US location reports.
  • Reporting and data: A Revenue Reporting tool (beta) gives finance leaders visibility into metrics like monthly recurring revenue, customer growth by activity, and revenue by product, with automated financial statements for cash-accounting businesses. Automatic reconciliation capabilities compare order-level data from systems of record with Stripe transactions and bank deposits. A preview was shown of an AI-powered Sigma Assistant that will let users ask natural-language questions about their Stripe data and receive SQL queries to run.

Also announced: Workbench, a new developer tool, and Docs AI, which answers developers’ questions with summaries drawn from Stripe documentation.

Stripe says each of these updates stems from user requests, with the aim of removing obstacles to growth.