Stripe’s Apac business should grow faster than any other region, says its chief revenue officer

[SINGAPORE] Stripe, the US-founded payments and financial services firm, is looking towards Asia-Pacific for growth. Its chief revenue officer Tyler Bryson said in an interview with The Business Times that he thinks Stripe “should grow faster in Asia-Pacific than any other region”, citing the region’s focus on digital experiences and leveraging the Internet to spur economic growth.

The company is looking to further embed itself in the payments infrastructure in Asia-Pacific and announced that it is partnering Singapore’s Sea to allow Monee’s payment services to be used by Stripe’s merchants as a payment option. (* See amendment note)

Stripe will begin by enabling ShopeePay and SPayLater, a buy-now pay-later service, for its merchants by the end of this year in South-east Asia.

The company said that the latest partnership with Sea gives Stripe another locally relevant way to service customers in South-east Asia and expands Stripe’s local payment method coverage in the region. (* See amendment note)

“In Asia-Pacific, the local partnerships and the unlocking of that has been a key part of our growth,” said Bryson and added that about 60 per cent of Stripe’s merchants in Asia are selling cross-border, a figure that is higher than Stripe’s merchants in other markets. 

Merchants on Stripe can currently accept cross-border payments from the likes of e-wallet providers such as Samsung Pay, the Philippines’s GCash, Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go, Thailand’s TrueMoney, and Singapore’s GrabPay. 

Stripe is also expected to announce a partnership with a Singapore-headquartered financial institution later this week. 

The company was founded by two Irish brothers, John and Patrick Collison, in Palo Alto, California, in 2010. The payments and financial services company now processes over US$1.9 trillion of payments annually and has become one of the largest and most valuable private firms. 

Stripe set up its Singapore office in 2016 and has been using the city-state as a regional product and engineering hub.

The company permanently moved its head of global product to Singapore in June this year as it looks for more growth in the region. 

Economies like Singapore, Greater China and Japan are some of Stripe’s key markets in the region. 

A sector that Stripe has been targeting growth in is artificial intelligence. The company is the payment provider for AI firms such as Anthropic, Minimax and OpenAI.

Bryson said that he sees an opportunity for Stripe to provide different billing systems for AI firms, such as usage-based billing, as demand continuously increases, instead of the more common subscription model. 

He referenced the utilities sector and how utilities companies bill customers by usage. Bryson said that concept would eventually become an option for the technology sector as companies adopt more AI tools. 

Stripe acquired Metronome, a usage-based billing and metering platform, in January for US$1 billion.

Stripe also recently acquired OpenRouter, an AI model gateway and routing platform for more than US$7 billion. Stripe said in a blogpost that the OpenRouter acquisition would help users optimise token routing and usage.

These two acquisitions complete an “end-to-end loop”, said Bryson, that is how companies should charge for tokens, and optimising usage, which is picking the right model for the right job at the right price. He added that Asia-Pacific growth for Stripe could expand even faster once more products from its recent acquisitions land in the region.

Amendment note: The previous version referenced the payment services as a Shopee product.