AI and stablecoins are “dramatically reshaping the landscape”, Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison has said, describing them as “gale force tailwinds” in a turbulent economy.
But despite the ongoing challenges, he said, there was a “powerful case” for optimism.
Mr Collison delivered his upbeat assessment at the opening of the payment technology company’s annual Stripe Sessions conference.
Stablecoins are crypto assets linked to the value of fiat currencies such as the US dollar.
Noting the world was at a “somewhat unusual” juncture, Mr Collison said AI and stablecoins were major breakthroughs in a turbulent economy.
“We have two countervailing forces. On the one hand we’re at a time of significant dislocation and uncertainty in global trade, maybe a fulcrum moment for the global economy. But we’re also gathering at a moment of profound technological change,” he said.
“We’ve seen the pattern of innovation during troubled macro times on many prior occasions. I think there’s an important lesson in this: when new technologies collide with a turbulent economy, the technology tends to win.”
Stripe has embraced both these new technologies. The company has also been winning an increasing amount of business from new AI companies, including major players in the sector such as OpenAI, alongside start-ups. It also completed its acquisition of stablecoin company Bridge in February.
“With a lot of crypto...it can feel very crypto native, and that doesn’t mean that they’re bad, but it can be unclear how they connect to the real economy and to the rest of the world,” Patrick Collison said. “But with stablecoins, it’s about real world utility in regular businesses.”
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Stripe’s president John Collison noted overall stablecoin supply was up 39 per cent in the year since the last Sessions event was held.
“What stablecoins are actually enabling is borderless financial services. Bridge has built the infrastructure to let businesses do and build what they need with stablecoins. We’re already seeing the demand for borderless financial services go through the roof,” he said.
“People have been waiting since 2010 to see if crypto is for real. What you’re seeing [with] the stablecoins is real utility for real businesses at a growth rate which eclipses anything we’ve seen before in Stripe, including Stripe itself.”
Mr Collison said the stablecoins could allow the launch of financial services in a “vast number” of countries at once, rather than the methodical expansion over years.
Stripe is announcing more than 60 updates and enhancements to its products over the three-day event in San Francisco’s Moscone Centre.
Around 8,000 people are attending, a rise of 32 per cent compared to last year, as well as companies such as URBN, Nestle, Nvidia, Shopify and Salesforce, and various start-ups.
Stripe has seen considerable growth in recent years as more businesses turn to the payments technology company. More than $1.4 trillion was processed by businesses built on Stripe last year, a figure the company had previously revealed in its annual update letter in February.
Last year revenues of businesses built on Stripe grew seven times faster than those of the S&P500 in aggregate, Patrick Collison told attendees.
“Stripe is empirically, the home to the world’s fastest growing companies,” he said. “This growth amounted to about $400 billion of new payment volume. The EU economy grew by around $600 billion last year, so the growth of the Stripe ecosystem is almost as large as the growth of Europe as a whole.”
