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Hi all!
Not long ago, Stripe held a conference where they showed the innovations of their service. In this article I will give a brief overview of the presentation and add my own comments.
One of the first videos entitled: Powering growth for the internet economy.
The first to speak is Patrick Collison, Cofounder and CEO, who says that the company’s mission is to increase the Internet’s GDP and reminds that now is an interesting time for financial services, as a lot has happened: it’s hard to forget that a couple of large banks went bankrupt, inflation and lending rates have skyrocketed space and transaction turnover has also slowed since the pandemic. Further in the spirit of Apple presentations, Patrick notes the company's growth and that in 2019 Stripe already processed $216B (two hundred and sixteen billion dollars), but in the next 12 months they were able to reach $1T (one trillion dollars). Also, the number of connected companies increased from 1600 to 4600 per week, and the number of clients with an annual turnover of $1B (one billion dollars) exceeded 100 clients.
On top of that, Stripe has introduced a lot of innovations and now wants to talk about them.
The floor goes to Will Gaybrick, President of Product and Business. He will talk about 3 key aspects of the business in which the company has innovated:
Will notes that when people hear about accepting and disbursing money, it sounds simple, but in reality it is quite problematic. This process affects many aspects such as: money acceptance, payment processing model, transfer system, international payment systems, regional payment solutions, wallets, banks, and so on. All these aspects change frequently, new regulatory requirements and work rules appear. He also notes that this is a headache for financial directors and others, since there are never enough resources to optimize payment.
Stripe is working on:
Stripe created 2 services: Stripe Checkout and Stripe Elements.
Checkout has been around for a long time and allows businesses to use the payment page that Stripe made. On this page you can configure subscriptions, payment methods, etc. BUT for companies that need more control, Stripe created Stripe Elements.
Stripe Elements supports the ability to embed payment on a company page and change the design and settings, making the payment page custom. Next, Will invites Bharath Srivatsan, Software Engineer, for a live demonstration of how it works. And here, it seems to me, the magic of transforming that same old interface with many fields, which you fill out and fill out, and with each field the desire to buy, disappears, into a brand new custom Stripe Elements. Bharath also notes that the problem of the first is not only in the UI, but also in the fact that the service is very difficult to maintain, and introducing new payment methods is still a challenge. Their solution allows you to reduce the number of fields and still get a UI that has already been tested and increases conversion. Also, the delivery address element was recently added, which allows you to have access to auto-filling addresses (here, as usual, we are most likely talking about the USA and maybe about London). I'm sure many will disagree that this is the optimal approach, but for smaller companies I'm sure it's a great solution.
The innovation doesn't stop there and Stripe also provides the ability to change the design of individual elements using their API. And they separately note that you don’t even need to be a developer to connect additional payment methods. Just open your personal account and enable the desired method.
Moving on to the next product, Will invites Clara Liang, Business Lead, to talk about Link .
Link - the name speaks for itself and the Stripe guys have done a very cool thing that will allow many companies to reduce the client’s time when paying, and not only when paying on the company’s website. Essentially, Link is saving a payment method in Stripe, and allowing the saved method to be used wherever Stripe Link is available. Just think about how many problems companies face because customers cannot enter their card details without errors. To make this feature even cooler, Link is already working in such giants as Twitter, Uber, AirBnB, MidJorney - in other words, millions of customers can pay on company websites without wasting time entering data. According to Stripe research, if a connected company switches to Stripe Elements, its revenue will increase by 10.4%.
Let's move on to the next innovation and Will invites Katie Dill, Head of Design, to present.
Stripe Terminal. There are now 173,000 (one hundred and seventy-three thousand) terminals in the world. Stripe surveyed its customers and collected feedback on existing issues to release the Stripe Reader S700. A fairly popular situation is played out on stage, which many people encounter, that a client came to the store and forgot what product/item he wanted to buy. To solve the problem, just enter the buyer’s email, and the previously added products/products from a computer or mobile phone will already be presented on the terminal. Further is better. If the client has already made a purchase before, the delivery address will be loaded without problems and all that remains is to pay.
Will takes over from Tanya Khakbaz, Head of Product Marketing, to talk about how Stripe can help your business grow. Their product Stripe Connect was launched in 2012 and now has 12,000 merchants/companies.
Tanya invites Alex Vogenthaler, Head of Product for Payments and Connect, to talk in more detail about the innovations that have been achieved recently.
Connect embedded components is an opportunity to add payment reports to the site, which is not the most difficult thing. What's more interesting is that you can easily manage payments, make returns, dispute chargebacks and see information about each payment. This solution, as before, is presented in a few lines and does not require many sprints to implement. Stripe also allows you to update your design using their API.
Next, I will skip the part of the presentation where they talk about many integrations with Stripe, so that they make life easier for people and speed up the receipt and payment of money. Of the approximately 15 minutes, the most memorable for me personally is the opportunity to turn an iPhone into a payment terminal.
Let's return to the presentation, where Vivek Sharma, Business Lead for Revenue & Finance Automation meets us and introduces everyone to Money 365 (a joke and a reference to Microsoft). The name of the service is revenue and finance automation suite (RAFAS). A service that allows you to solve the following problems from one place:
And now on stage are Meredith Neyrand, Checkout and Payment Links, together with Vivek Sharma, Business Lead for Revenue & Finance Automation, who will present AI (Artificial intelligence) in Stripe products.
Sigma. I used Sigma about 3 years ago - and I'll be honest - it was a pain. I forgot to describe that Sigma is a built-in SQL platform that did not work very well and it was almost impossible to understand the dates. And what the guys did just blew my mind. They introduced Assistant - an AI that solves the problem of working with Sigma, and opens the door for people who don't know how to use SQL. You ask a question - you receive a ready-made SQL query in response and off you go. I can really already imagine how this has complicated the life of analysts who use local databases and do not know about the existence of Sigma. They will receive many messages with random queries from Sigma and demands to check why the data in the company’s dashboards differs from the numbers from the Sigma SQL query. But as an innovation, it’s absolutely superb.
As a continuation of AI, DocAI was also presented, which similarly allows you to ask a question in ordinary language and receive an answer regarding integration. As an example, clarify how to add Tax ID to invoices and save time reading documentation.
The presentation will close with Emily Sands, Head of Information, together with Michael Glukhovsky, Product Manager, Developer Platform, and they will talk about Workbench. The essence of this service is that developers spend up to 41% of their time on bugs and maintenance, and here is the Stripe solution. The system helps to check changes and identify errors before release to production and show where the problem is.
At the end, Patrick Collison, CEO, comes out again and sums up what he was able to present (picture below) and says a huge thank you to everyone for your attention.
Stripe - Payment processing platform.
Not long ago, Stripe held a conference where they showed the innovations of their service. In this article I will give a brief overview of the presentation and add my own comments.
One of the first videos entitled: Powering growth for the internet economy.
The first to speak is Patrick Collison, Cofounder and CEO, who says that the company’s mission is to increase the Internet’s GDP and reminds that now is an interesting time for financial services, as a lot has happened: it’s hard to forget that a couple of large banks went bankrupt, inflation and lending rates have skyrocketed space and transaction turnover has also slowed since the pandemic. Further in the spirit of Apple presentations, Patrick notes the company's growth and that in 2019 Stripe already processed $216B (two hundred and sixteen billion dollars), but in the next 12 months they were able to reach $1T (one trillion dollars). Also, the number of connected companies increased from 1600 to 4600 per week, and the number of clients with an annual turnover of $1B (one billion dollars) exceeded 100 clients.
On top of that, Stripe has introduced a lot of innovations and now wants to talk about them.
The floor goes to Will Gaybrick, President of Product and Business. He will talk about 3 key aspects of the business in which the company has innovated:
- Global payments
- Embedded payments and BAAS (Banking as a service)
- Revenue and finance automation
Will notes that when people hear about accepting and disbursing money, it sounds simple, but in reality it is quite problematic. This process affects many aspects such as: money acceptance, payment processing model, transfer system, international payment systems, regional payment solutions, wallets, banks, and so on. All these aspects change frequently, new regulatory requirements and work rules appear. He also notes that this is a headache for financial directors and others, since there are never enough resources to optimize payment.
Stripe is working on:
- Optimizing payment flows
- Combining offline and online payments
- Providing access to new payment channels and machine learning.
Stripe Checkout and Stripe Elements
He begins his story with optimization of payment flows.Stripe created 2 services: Stripe Checkout and Stripe Elements.
Checkout has been around for a long time and allows businesses to use the payment page that Stripe made. On this page you can configure subscriptions, payment methods, etc. BUT for companies that need more control, Stripe created Stripe Elements.
Stripe Elements supports the ability to embed payment on a company page and change the design and settings, making the payment page custom. Next, Will invites Bharath Srivatsan, Software Engineer, for a live demonstration of how it works. And here, it seems to me, the magic of transforming that same old interface with many fields, which you fill out and fill out, and with each field the desire to buy, disappears, into a brand new custom Stripe Elements. Bharath also notes that the problem of the first is not only in the UI, but also in the fact that the service is very difficult to maintain, and introducing new payment methods is still a challenge. Their solution allows you to reduce the number of fields and still get a UI that has already been tested and increases conversion. Also, the delivery address element was recently added, which allows you to have access to auto-filling addresses (here, as usual, we are most likely talking about the USA and maybe about London). I'm sure many will disagree that this is the optimal approach, but for smaller companies I'm sure it's a great solution.
The innovation doesn't stop there and Stripe also provides the ability to change the design of individual elements using their API. And they separately note that you don’t even need to be a developer to connect additional payment methods. Just open your personal account and enable the desired method.
Moving on to the next product, Will invites Clara Liang, Business Lead, to talk about Link .
Link - the name speaks for itself and the Stripe guys have done a very cool thing that will allow many companies to reduce the client’s time when paying, and not only when paying on the company’s website. Essentially, Link is saving a payment method in Stripe, and allowing the saved method to be used wherever Stripe Link is available. Just think about how many problems companies face because customers cannot enter their card details without errors. To make this feature even cooler, Link is already working in such giants as Twitter, Uber, AirBnB, MidJorney - in other words, millions of customers can pay on company websites without wasting time entering data. According to Stripe research, if a connected company switches to Stripe Elements, its revenue will increase by 10.4%.
Let's move on to the next innovation and Will invites Katie Dill, Head of Design, to present.
Stripe Terminal. There are now 173,000 (one hundred and seventy-three thousand) terminals in the world. Stripe surveyed its customers and collected feedback on existing issues to release the Stripe Reader S700. A fairly popular situation is played out on stage, which many people encounter, that a client came to the store and forgot what product/item he wanted to buy. To solve the problem, just enter the buyer’s email, and the previously added products/products from a computer or mobile phone will already be presented on the terminal. Further is better. If the client has already made a purchase before, the delivery address will be loaded without problems and all that remains is to pay.
Will takes over from Tanya Khakbaz, Head of Product Marketing, to talk about how Stripe can help your business grow. Their product Stripe Connect was launched in 2012 and now has 12,000 merchants/companies.
Tanya invites Alex Vogenthaler, Head of Product for Payments and Connect, to talk in more detail about the innovations that have been achieved recently.
Connect embedded components is an opportunity to add payment reports to the site, which is not the most difficult thing. What's more interesting is that you can easily manage payments, make returns, dispute chargebacks and see information about each payment. This solution, as before, is presented in a few lines and does not require many sprints to implement. Stripe also allows you to update your design using their API.
Next, I will skip the part of the presentation where they talk about many integrations with Stripe, so that they make life easier for people and speed up the receipt and payment of money. Of the approximately 15 minutes, the most memorable for me personally is the opportunity to turn an iPhone into a payment terminal.
Let's return to the presentation, where Vivek Sharma, Business Lead for Revenue & Finance Automation meets us and introduces everyone to Money 365 (a joke and a reference to Microsoft). The name of the service is revenue and finance automation suite (RAFAS). A service that allows you to solve the following problems from one place:
- Billing
- Tax
- Revenue recognition
- Data Pipelines
- Revenue Reporting
- Reconciliation
And now on stage are Meredith Neyrand, Checkout and Payment Links, together with Vivek Sharma, Business Lead for Revenue & Finance Automation, who will present AI (Artificial intelligence) in Stripe products.
Sigma. I used Sigma about 3 years ago - and I'll be honest - it was a pain. I forgot to describe that Sigma is a built-in SQL platform that did not work very well and it was almost impossible to understand the dates. And what the guys did just blew my mind. They introduced Assistant - an AI that solves the problem of working with Sigma, and opens the door for people who don't know how to use SQL. You ask a question - you receive a ready-made SQL query in response and off you go. I can really already imagine how this has complicated the life of analysts who use local databases and do not know about the existence of Sigma. They will receive many messages with random queries from Sigma and demands to check why the data in the company’s dashboards differs from the numbers from the Sigma SQL query. But as an innovation, it’s absolutely superb.
As a continuation of AI, DocAI was also presented, which similarly allows you to ask a question in ordinary language and receive an answer regarding integration. As an example, clarify how to add Tax ID to invoices and save time reading documentation.
The presentation will close with Emily Sands, Head of Information, together with Michael Glukhovsky, Product Manager, Developer Platform, and they will talk about Workbench. The essence of this service is that developers spend up to 41% of their time on bugs and maintenance, and here is the Stripe solution. The system helps to check changes and identify errors before release to production and show where the problem is.
At the end, Patrick Collison, CEO, comes out again and sums up what he was able to present (picture below) and says a huge thank you to everyone for your attention.
Stripe - Payment processing platform.
