Stripe launches Stripe Treasury

Shopify is partnering with Stripe and Evolve Bank & Trust to build Shopify Balance, the business account designed to help merchants take control of their finances. Stripe Treasury is a leap forward for Stripe’s platform partners, who can now extend the level of support they provide to their users. As Stripe continues to invest heavily in its treasury infrastructure, it will deepen its new partnership with Goldman Sachs to add even more functionality to Stripe Treasury in the US next year.

For businesses today, accessing financial services can typically involve a series of bureaucratic hoops and a lengthy application process. According to recent Stripe research, setting up a bank account takes 5 and a half days on average (and 7 days on average for online businesses), around one in four (23%) businesses have to send a fax to open an account, and over half (55%) of businesses are required to visit a branch in person to open a bank account. Financial services simply weren’t designed for the modern internet, and this is a pain point for businesses today: nearly half (46%) of companies report that their banking experience has hindered their company growth.

This kind of off-line banking experience is increasingly incongruous in a world where 76% of businesses use an industry-specific software platform to manage their business, a figure that increases to 92% for businesses with more than 500 employees. The feedback from Stripe’s users is that they want a digital solution for financial services available directly within the software platform that powers their operations. On the flipside, Stripe’s platform customers are increasingly looking to embed financial services into their own product, but oftentimes face barriers to doing so.

Stripe Treasury removes some of these barriers, enabling platforms like Shopify to easily offer its merchants access to critical financial products to manage their businesses’ finances. With Stripe Treasury, platforms can offer their users interest-earning accounts eligible for FDIC insurance in minutes, enabled by Evolve Bank & Trust. Platform business customers can have near-instant access to revenue earned through Stripe, spend this directly from their balance with a dedicated card, transfer it via ACH or wire transfer, pay bills, and more.

Stripe is enabling standardised access via APIs to the global banking capabilities of its bank partner network, which now includes Goldman Sachs Bank USA and Evolve Bank & Trust as US partners, and Citibank N.A. and Barclays as global expansion partners. And through Stripe, these banks are able to extend their reach to millions of businesses.