Stripe

What is Stripe?

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform that enables businesses to accept payments, manage billing, and build financial services into their applications. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in San Francisco, Stripe processes payments across 135+ currencies and payment methods, handling $1.9 trillion in annual transaction volume with 99.999% uptime. The platform serves startups, enterprises, and platforms of all sizes—including 50% of Fortune 100 companies and 78% of the Forbes AI 50 list.

Stripe's core products include Payments (online and in-person transactions), Billing (subscription management for 200+ million active subscriptions), Connect (marketplace and platform payments), Terminal (physical point-of-sale), Radar (fraud detection), Link (one-click checkout), and Financial Connections (bank account linking). For emerging use cases, Stripe offers Card Issuing, Stablecoins and crypto payment rails, and usage-based billing components designed for agentic commerce and AI-driven revenue models. The platform supports embedded payments and no-code financial tools, allowing platforms and SaaS companies to offer financial services without building from scratch.

Stripe operates on a pay-per-use pricing model, charging variable fees per transaction rather than flat monthly costs. The company provides multiple integration paths: developers can build directly via APIs, platforms can embed no-code components, and enterprises receive dedicated implementation support through Stripe's professional services team or certified consulting partners. Support tiers range from community-based to enterprise plans with 24/7 assistance.

The platform has become standard infrastructure for SaaS billing (Linear, Substack), marketplaces (Instacart), card-issuing programs, and fintech embedded payment scenarios. Stripe Startups offers discounted processing rates and banking benefits, while Stripe Atlas provides incorporation and banking setup in two days. Usage-based billing,