Inside Stripe’s New Plan to Grow Marketplaces

March 26, 2024 by
Inside Stripe’s New Plan to Grow Marketplaces

Stripe’s basic plan for business operations is shockingly simple. It’s so simple, in fact, that a lot of people don’t hear much about it unless they follow along with the mobile payments world.

With just a few simple lines of code, its customers have instant access to an elegant and sophisticated platform for online payments. But Stripe is also more than a payments processor; it’s an entirely new kind of Internet commerce platform, offering a full stack of tools and APIs that help companies build global Internet businesses.

But Stripe isn’t resting on the metaphorical laurels of its fiscal equivalent of the Easy button from Staples commercials; it’s got a nifty plan to pick up some new business called Stripe Connect.

More specifically, it’s bringing out a new service for users, allowing companies in the United States and Canada to sign up workers for the increasing number of on-demand marketplaces.

That means that services wanting to be, for example, the next Homejoy, Instacart, or Lyft will be able to sign up to offer services in 18 different countries where Stripe operates. Stripe Connect helps marketplaces process payments on behalf of sellers from around the world and ensure they get paid. Even on the internet, which is theoretically borderless, this process has been expensive, slow, and in some cases not even possible — until now.

Those who put Stripe Connect to work will have access to a set of new customization options. How money moves through the system, for example—like holding on to some credit card information—becomes a possible point of alteration here; sometimes it can be good to have that information on file.

Stripe Connect is making it easier than ever to build and grow a global marketplace business, yet another step in its march to build a universal platform for payments.

There’s an old saying noting that the only people who reliably got rich in a gold rush were the people who sold shovels.

It’s a good point to bear in mind here; Stripe and its new Stripe Connect system, is looking to sell shovels in an era of the Internet gold rush. The business isn’t sexy—no one will call Stripe the next Uber or the next Google or the next much of anything, really—but it’s likely going to have a huge impact because its aiming to solve the last great problems of online commerce.

They’re not having the gold rush, they’re not finding the huge nuggets. They’re just selling that one thing that no one can go hunting gold without.

Only time will tell just how well Stripe and its array of services hold up in the long term. But one thing’s quite clear: Stripe has a plan for making money by making money easier to move around. That’s a point that likely won’t go unappreciated throughout the Web, and there are few surer ways to success than having a small part in a host of different operations.

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