Learning about Stripe and how do they communicate?

Marketing Site tear down

I have been interested in Stripe for some time. I have heard many good things about the company since its founding (from the famous doing things that don’t scale example of “the Collison installs”, to the famous “we are growing the GDP of the internet”). Different from these grand narratives is what I hear is their tactical implementation of the best API documentations and some have complemented them for their websitesu. I am intrigued. I want to learn and want to see if there’s anything that can be gleaned from its implementation of developer documentation.

As always, the act of analysis is simply the activity of breaking things apart to reveal the structure and rebuild using the said structure for general applications. I will break a part or tear down Stripe’s public marketing site and its developer documentation.

With all of these, I do want to establish that I am not in the FinTech space so my knowledge and extent of the matter is that of an observer with keen interest, consuming publicly available information.

TLDR: Conclusions upfront

This turned out to be such a lengthy piece and few will have the patience to go through it to the end. So I will share the conclusion upfront in terms of learnings

1. Stripe communicates with strong emphasis in building credibility via logos/case studies/key metrics & statistics

2. While core products are the same, they are recombined together to speak to a specific audience by emphasizing on the benefits/value. Products are rarely talked about so drily without connecting to the benefits

3. The fundamental grouping logic of individual products follow the logic of:

   1. Audience

   2. Use Case

   3. Value/Benefits/outcome

4. Enterprise segment communications focus much more heavily on communicating the measurable outcomes (i am assuming that the enterprise targets care about these metrics)

5. At the end of the respective page, specific next steps are highlighted where options for either start ups, enterprise are laid out:

   1. Do it yourself - check out more resources yourself

   2. Do it with some partners (only available to the enterprise)

Of course, these conclusions will matter more if you read through how I got to these.

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Now not everyone is as familiar with Stripe, I’d first take sometime to share what I learned of the company in terms of concrete details such as its product suites.

Stripe Overview

Some quick facts, courtesy of Perplexity.

Their mission is to grow the GDP of the internet. By its 2023 annual shareholder letter, the Collison brothers reported a eye catching fact - “they have successfully processed 1% of the 2023 Global GDP, processing over 1 trillion USD payment volume”. I had to look up what it was in 2023. It turns out to be 105 trillion. Though just short of 1%, the fact that they are true to their mission and measured against it was impressive.

Now what does Stripe actually do? Glad that you asked but be careful of what you are asking for. Because once I started laying this out to you, it may be super dry. Well hope not.

Their product and structure

Before digging into this myself, I had a general impression that their core product is a some type of API that allows merchant to receive payments from their customers. While this is true, Stripe over the years has also grown quite extensively in its product portfolio.

As of June 2024, their products can be grouped into the following three categories:

1. Global payments with 12 products in the portfolio

2. Revenue and finance automations with 7 products

3. Banking as a service with 4 products

Great, a list of products, how interesting!

For our ease of understanding, Stripe has clearly avoided the classic trap of “focusing only on features”. Customers, especially those who don’t know anything about you, don’t really care. Stripe has also organized its products that speaks to specific types of customers/partners by bundling different relevant products into “company stages” and “use cases”

It’s worth-a-while to at least look at how Stripe communicates to startups and enterprises! (Hey look, I did the say the title thing like in the movies)

Stripe for Startups

Let’s break it down. Above the fold:

The main value propositions to Startups:

1. Start: Incorporate your company, test and accept payments with no-code tools

2. Scale & grow: Automate financial operations to move faster

Then below the fold, immediately, Stripe speaks to the specific types of businesses that it supports:

This carousel goes into different types of use case type and Stripe products that cater to along with the logos associated with that use case type which I assume to be broadly familiar to those in the startup space

1. SaaS

2. Marketplace

3. Banking as a service

4. Ecommerce

5. Crypto

6. Creator economy

I do wonder if vast majority of the number startup customers of Stripe fall into these buckets in descending order of magnitude as well.

After specifying the right subtype of startups that Stripe speaks to, it goes into establishing its first primary offering along with benefits:

Payments Product for Startups

“Payments” being the offering and the emphasis on:

1. Comprehensiveness: wide range of support of payments

2. Level of efforts befitting the need: no code to full customization with APIs

Now why would you care about payments as a product?

It helps you generate revenue faster! (This has the link to the detailed product page that speaks to this benefit in greater detail)

I do admit that these are a bit too much in the weeds especially looking at each section in detail but I promise that this is building up to some takeaway in the structure of how Stripe speaks to prospects of different category.

Then it goes into the next category of product offerings → Automating revenue and finance. The outcome highlighted here is to establish a strong foundation.

Automate Revenue and finance for start ups

Within this goal these products are featured:

1. Billing products that automate sales tax, VAT, and GST

2. The three products that help close the books quickly and get real-time insights

   1. Revenue recognition products

   2. Custom reporting product

   3. Data pipeline products

Its interesting to note that right next to the elaboration on the products that deliver against the outcome are case study of customer stories of Open AI and statistic that establishes credibility in the number of start ups that are built using Stripe’s finance automation suite of products.

Embedding payments into platform for startups

The outcome here is the emphasis of getting to market faster without up front costs of development. I can imagine that as startups, fast time to market must be music to ears. The product that Stripe offers to deliver against such a goal is their platform payments product.

And similar to the automation of finance reporting, one case study is featured and one key statistic is shared.

Next comes the monetize financial services and test new business models offering.

Embedding financial services for startups

Here three products are featured to deliver against this offering:

1. Issuing products

2. Financial products

3. Treasury products

Similar to the above sections, Stripe features a case study but unlike above, there’s only a guide as opposed to a statistic that was shared. It could be that in this area, they haven’t reached enough density where an impressive statistic can be shared?

Then comes the insertion of three products one that allows incorporation, one is for building apps directly on Stripe and the last seems to be a general feature on dashboarding and reporting (which isn’t even a stand alone product)

It is a bit odd that the presentation of these two products doesn’t quite follow a similar logic as before where:

1. Section is about the main offering

2. The benefits of the offering are called out

3. The individual products that make up the offering are introduced

4. Parallel to the presentation is the case study along with an impressive stat

Here instead you see simply the three products that Stripe offers and their own benefits. The overall narrative is a bit broken as a result. But I suppose it is not that big of a deal since it is the end of the page and I suppose that’s where structure can afford to be broken.

Eventually at the bottom of the page is a mixture of:

1. Helpful resources

   1. Recommended resources

   2. Resources for specific startup partners)

   3. General help links

2. CTA to get started

3. Statistics to further establish credibility

Now as promised, after painstakingly broken down each section, we can create the following structure and narrative for the page.

So how does Stripe communicate to Startups?

Here’s Stripe for Startup Narrative Summary & take-away. The following structure emerges.

1. Overview of Stripe offering & benefits to Startup

2. Payments for startups

3. Automate revenue and finance for startups

4. Embedding payments for startups

5. Monetize financial services and test business models

6. End page stuff:

   1. Important products & features for startups

   2. Impressive statistics that must resonate with the end customer

   3. Resources that are relevant for folks who have reached this part of the page

   4. CTA to get started

Within each of the offering bullet point is a set of products that are bundled together to speak to the benefits created.

After going through this analysis, it is a lot clearer to me what exactly Stripe offers and the value / benefits that it creates for its target audience. However, I can’t help but feel that there’s a lot of stuff here. The general logic is that Stripe has a lot of products, here are how these products are bundled together that speak to the start up audience. These products are bundled together that make sense that can hopefully address a pain point. It is interesting that only value is emphasized but there’s no mention of specific difficulties and challenges. This becomes a bit counterintuitive for me because I thought the whole purpose creating strong resonance is to highlight the pains target customers feel. Don’t know how to quite make of it yet.

One important observation is that establishing credibility is a main focus for the page. Every time an offering is introduced, some type of credibility establishing artifact is introduced at the same time:

1. Logos

2. Case studies

3. Market statistics in adoption

Now let’s apply the same analysis to Stripe for Enterprise

Stripe for Enterprise

I have to admit that proposition: build the next era of your enterprise sounds super vague. It has a slight connotation of innovation attached to it but exactly what’s offered to the enterprise isn’t clear. The smaller texts below spell this out better:

1. Expansion into global markets

2. Reimagination of the customer experience

And similar takeaway as what’s spelled out to the startup offering, credibility is added by flashing the brand logos.

If you keep scrolling, you will see 3 primary offerings to the enterprise immediately.

1. Global payments for enterprise

2. Platform payments for enterprise

3. Finance automations for enterprise

Let’s dive into each

Global Payments for enterprise

Within this offering, the primary value is spelled out: expanding in every market.

There are three outcomes highlighted:

1. Grow revenue by 11.9% on average with the following products

   1. Online payments

   2. Local payment methods

   3. One-click payments

2. Unify commerce with in person payments with

   1. in person payments

3. Boost authorization rates by 5% with the following

   1. Authorization optimization

   2. Fraud prevention

Along with the products featured, a guide, a case study and detailed statistics are presented alongside of the main products

Now time for the next offering:

Platform payments and banking-as-a-service for the enterprise

Two outcomes are highlighted:

1. Boost incremental profit from embedded payments volume by 10%

   1. This is achieved with the platform payments product

2. Embed financial services in weeks, not months. Three products are mentioned here:

   1. Issuing

   2. Financing

   3. Treasury

Here again we see the same trio of establishing credibility:

1. A guide to payments transformation

2. A customer story with BWM

3. key stat where 75% of global marketplace is powered by Stripe

The next section it is. Ah this is so long….. :(

Revenue and Finance automation for Enterprise

Here 3 outcomes are highlighted:

1. Power recurring revenue and recover up to 38% of failed payments with

   1. Billiong

   2. Invoicing

   3. Finance Automation

2. Automate sales tax, VAT, and GST with Tax product

3. Close the books faster and get real-time insights with

   1. Revenue recognition

   2. Reporting

   3. Data pipeline

Finally, at the end of the page, you will see the enterprise equivalent of call to action which is spelling out the collaboration modes.

CTA for the prospective enterprise customers

Here you can see the types of support options available:

1. Dedicated support

2. Integrations by working directly with Stripe or with Stripe’s partners

3. Or exploring direct out of the box integrations either at data level, through apps or building custom with Stripe’s elements

Whewwwww, that’s it. Let’s go!

Now let’s quickly review what we learned:

Compare and contrast between offerings made to the enterprise vs startups

What’s the same:

1. Emphasis on the brand logos to establish credibility

2. To flesh out the support for a section, repeat use of logos, statistics, case studies

3. Products are bundled together where benefits/value are communicated.

   1. Largely speaking, these bundles are kind of like a product group. The organizing logic seems to center around either the value metrics that clients/ users care about or logical groupings of products by some internal business logic

4. The underlying products are the same. In fact, some of the products show up multiple times in these communications when there are different & important value needing to be communicated. (payments as a product show up multiple times)

What’s different

1. The outcome is more clearly spelled out for the enterprise audience segment. there’s clear mention of the metrics and outcome impact for the communications to the enterprise.

2. Clear communications on the structure of what’s on the page.

3. Offerings made to the startups have sub segments more clearly called out such as SaaS/marketplace etc. And this is the first thing on the page whereas for the enterprise, such subsegments exist but it is quietly tucked away at the end. The exact segments in the enterprise are the same as that of segments mentioned in the startups. The logos have been swapped out to show a more enterprise bent. This is leading me to believe that their enterprise offering isn’t that mature yet.