Stripe Treasury: Embedded Business Banking - Stripe Announcement

Fintech company Stripe today unveiled Stripe Treasury, a significant new offering. The company is collaborating with financial institutions to deliver a banking-as-a-service application programming interface (API). This means Stripe’s customers will have the capability to offer banking accounts directly to their own customers – access to this service is currently limited to those with an invitation.

This development aligns with a growing industry movement known as embedded finance. The core idea behind embedded finance is to integrate financial services seamlessly into the other services people already utilize, rather than keeping them separate. This brings financial tools closer to the end user within their existing workflows.

Several organizations are currently developing embedded business banking solutions, with Wise being one example. Stripe is well-positioned to leverage its established customer network to encourage adoption of Stripe Treasury for innovative banking applications.

As an illustration, Shopify is integrating Stripe Treasury into Shopify Balance. Shopify merchants seeking to manage funds, make payments, and spend money directly from their Shopify platform can open a bank account within Shopify Balance, bypassing the need for a conventional bank account. Stripe Treasury provides the underlying technology for this functionality.

Despite this expansion, Stripe maintains it does not aspire to operate as a bank itself. The company remains dedicated to providing the underlying infrastructure and facilitating payments. It achieves this through partnerships with banks like Evolve Bank and Goldman Sachs within the U.S., and intends to extend Stripe Treasury’s availability internationally through collaborations with Citibank and Barclays.

Stripe simplifies complex processes by converting them into API calls. An API functions as a programming interface, enabling interaction with external services through straightforward commands. For example, a developer can utilize Stripe Treasury to initiate the opening of bank accounts directly within their own service by utilizing Stripe’s API.

Likewise, transferring funds or settling bills can be accomplished through API calls. When used in conjunction with Stripe Issuing, it also becomes possible to create and distribute both virtual and physical cards linked to a bank account. Gradually, Stripe is developing a suite of products that encompass a larger portion of the overall payments ecosystem.