The Stripe offices in San Francisco. Ariel Zambelich/WIRED
Stripe is having a moment.
Almost as soon as Apple announced its new pay-by-iPhone service, the online payments startup released its specs for supporting Apple Pay—a clear sign the world’s most valuable company had brought Stripe into its inner circle. Facebook’s new “Buy” button is powered by Stripe’s code. And so is Twitter’s.
For a while now, Silicon Valley has been in love with Stripe’s promise—believing its coding tools can help bootstrap a world where we can so easily pay for stuff through most any app or web service—and these high-profile partnerships from the likes of Apple and Facebook are a sign that the company’s promise is being realized. Now, Stripe and its investors hope to build on that momentum by creating a $10 million fund that will help others create new tools that any business can use in tandem with what Stripe already offers.
Following the examples of Apple, Facebook, and Twitter—among others—the new fund is an effort to extend Stripe from product into platform—to embed its tools more deeply into the internet’s commercial infrastructure. And anyone can become a part of this effort with little more than a killer email.
To be clear, Stripe already is a platform, in the sense that developers use its software code and application programming interfaces, or APIs, to integrate payments into their own commerce sites and apps. For example, Stripe handles payments for ride-sharing service Lyft and grocery delivery startup Instacart. But the Stripe Platform Fund—created with money provided by venture capital firm General Catalyst—aims to do something different. It will dole out financing in $250,000 to $500,000 chunks so that independent outfits can create all sorts of new tools for Stripe users.
The first $500,000 infusion will go to Baremetrics, a company that lets cloud software businesses track their overall financials and measure the value of every customer by analyzing Stripe payments data. And now others can apply to join Baremetrics in the program.
In keeping with Stripe’s minimalist philosophy, the application process for Stripe funding appears plain and simple. The company says applicants must submit a one-page email summarizing the tool they’re building, along with links to the Github and LinkedIn profiles of the developers, and a link to the tool itself. The funding process, Stripe says, will transpire via startup accelerator Y Combinator’s open-source financing documents.
From left, Patrick and John Collison. Ariel Zambelich/WIRED
Next-big-thing aspirants could be forgiven for thinking the idea of leaping into payments tech sounds dry compared to, say, building a billion-dollar messaging app or a virtual reality headset. But what’s not so dull is this number: $1 trillion. That’s how much money research firm IDC estimates mobile users will spend by 2017, and no single service is capturing more than a fraction of the money moving now. Last year, for example, online payments granddaddy PayPal processed $27 billion in mobile payments, out of the $235 billion that moved in 2013, according to Gartner estimates.
Despite the magnitude of those figures, only a small percentage of global commerce takes place via the internet. Stripe’s founders, brothers Patrick and John Collison, are betting that in the coming years, that percentage will rise. It’s a tough proposition to argue against, and Stripe has positioned itself in a sweet spot to ride that growth. Apple, Facebook, and Twitter aren’t bad companions to have along for the trip, and $10 million says a few canny coders will at least get a seat in business class to see how high this rocket flies.
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