“You still use a fax machine” is up there with “call me on your Nokia” as the most cliche way to burn someone for being tech illiterate.
In the bank industry, it’s not a joke… it’s reality.
Here are recent survey results from Stripe, the $100B fintech startup:
Actually, it is kind of a joke.
… which moves at the speed of the internet. It’s a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) API that allows Stripe users to offer their own turnkey banking services.
Stripe has partnered with a number of banks (e.g., Goldman Sachs, Evolve Bank & Trust) to offer key solutions like creating customer accounts, storing money, earning interest, and paying bills.
Crucially, Stripe — widely noted for its ease of use (“just a few lines of code”) — is the touch point with nary a fax machine in sight.
But it does have one big partner: Shopify, which offers Shopify Balance.
On its website, the Canadian ecommerce giant highlights the value-add of a BaaS product vs. going to a traditional bank:
Take Shopify: It already has millions of customers paying for ecommerce services. With Stripe Treasury, it’s able to layer on another potential revenue stream in the form of banking services.
The larger trend of non-finance internet companies layering on fintech services (e.g., payments, lending, insurance, bank accounts) is called embedded finance.
Per VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, embedding finance for SaaS companies:
Also last week, Stripe expanded its Stripe Capital product to allow users to build their own lending services. It won’t be long until “wait, you don’t use Stripe” becomes the cliche burn for companies living in the past.