Stripe – the payments API company that revolutionized ecommerce payments infrastructure – launches “Stripe Capital”, a commercial credit service that will lend to Stripe customers.
Stripe Capital will have two key advantages over traditional Financial Institutions (“FIs”). First, Stripe is present at the point of sale, providing it insight into payments flow before the transaction settles with the merchant bank (whom are competitors on the credit side). Second and more importantly – given that Stripe is embedded in the ecommerce infrastructure, in many cases it will have commercial relationships with multiple parties in a transaction – therefore providing Stripe Capital with a more holistic view into the credit worthiness of its commercial customers. Compare this to legacy FIs which may or may not have a strong regional presence (and therefore regional visibility) but in most cases will lack Stripe’s global visibility into the payments ecosystem.
Stripe Capital expects the typical loan amount to be in the $10,000-$20,000 range based on transactions thus far. The company plans to make these loans available to existing customers within one day – a third competitive advantage over a number of FIs. Fintech competitors include PayPal tkr: (PYPL) and Square (tkr: SQ).
Stripe will hold its “Sessions” user conference on Tuesday September 10th in San Francisco.
Disclosure: we are Stripe customers both here at TEK2day and at CEORater.