Stripe’s 2023 annual letter

Charlie Munger described a two-part rule that works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere: 1) take a simple idea and 2) take it very seriously.

Stripe’s mission is to grow the GDP of the internet. The core idea behind the company—one we endeavor to take very seriously—is that we’re still early in the journey of software-driven innovation, and Stripe is an applied exercise in thinking through some of the corollaries of that. In particular, thanks to the new possibilities afforded by the internet, we believe that putting better—more global, easier to use, more flexible, faster, cheaper—economic infrastructure in the hands of companies and entrepreneurs will lead to a more vibrant and prosperous world. Remarkably, this journey was still in its infancy when Stripe launched in 2011. Thirteen years, and more than a doubling in internet users later, it’s still early.¹ (Editorial note 1)Editorial · 1Known at the timeThe letter opens with the frame for everything after it: thirteen years in, the market is still early. That frame justifies reinvesting rather than harvesting, and it lets a private company describe its growth against the internet economy rather than against rivals. It sets no test for when ‘early’ would end. The world of 2034 is going to look very different.

Collectively, the businesses running on Stripe passed the milestone of $1 trillion in total payment volume in 2023, up 25% from the prior year² (Fact note 2)Fact · 2With hindsightThe next letter reported $1.4 trillion in total payment volume for 2024, up 38%, and called 2024 “an unusually good year”. The letter after that reported $1.9 trillion in “total volume” for 2025, up 34%, equivalent to roughly 1.6% of global GDP.SourcesStripeStripe’s 2024 annual letter27 Feb 2025StripeStripe’s 2025 annual letter24 Feb 2026. (US e-commerce, an imperfect but useful comparison, grew 7.6% last year.) At $1 trillion, the output of businesses that run on Stripe sums to roughly 1% of global GDP. (Most Stripe users sell so-called “final” goods, which are those that count toward GDP.)

Stripe was robustly cash flow positive in 2023 and expects to be again in 2024.³ (Fact note 3)Fact · 3With hindsightThe later letters switch from cash flow to profit: “Stripe was profitable in 2024”, and in 2025 “Stripe remained robustly profitable”. Neither gives a profit or cash-flow figure. In February 2026 Stripe said it would use a portion of its own capital to repurchase shares in a tender offer for current and former employees at a $159B valuation.SourcesStripeStripe’s 2024 annual letter27 Feb 2025StripeStripe’s 2025 annual letter24 Feb 2026StripeStripe publishes 2025 annual letter and announces tender offer to provide liquidity to current and former employees24 Feb 2026 This threshold is important, because it allows us to invest for the long term, building what we believe our users need 10 years from now, without regard for the natural volatility of capital markets. In addition, Stripe customers can be confident that we provide stable, long-term infrastructure with a durably sustainable business model.

Online payments is, among other things, a conversion optimization problem.

[ … ] Not shown: Paying in person versus online, and abandoned shopping carts.

We obsess over eliminating barriers to internet purchases. Our optimized checkout suite now includes over 100 optimizations, from the very large to the very small. Even the smallest tweak to fine-tune the checkout experience benefits from Stripe’s economies of scale, since we can amortize the fixed costs of complex improvements across more than a trillion dollars of transactions⁴ (Editorial note 4)Editorial · 4Known at the timeThis is the letter’s economic core. A fixed-cost improvement spread over more volume makes every customer’s checkout better, which attracts more volume. The founders present scale as a benefit to the customer rather than a moat, which is harder for a smaller processor to answer. The uplift figures that support it come from Stripe and its customer stories..

[ … ] Not shown: Checkout interfaces and a customer example.

The online payment landscape is fragmenting, with new payment methods proliferating around the world (including the US).⁵ (Fact note 5)Fact · 5With hindsightThe 2023 letter does not mention stablecoins or crypto. The next one says: “In October, we announced our acquisition of Bridge, the world’s leading stablecoin orchestration platform.” Stripe completed the acquisition on 4 February 2025. The 2025 letter says Bridge “saw volume more than quadruple” and that Stripe had unveiled Tempo, “a blockchain purpose-built for payments”.SourcesStripeStripe’s 2023 annual letter13 Mar 2024StripeStripe’s 2024 annual letter27 Feb 2025StripeStripe completes Bridge acquisition4 Feb 2025StripeStripe’s 2025 annual letter24 Feb 2026 Over the last year alone, we’ve added support for more than 50 new payment methods, taking the total supported to over 100.

[ … ] Not shown: More payment examples and a customer story.

While global money movement is no simple thing, overseeing how much to charge whom, and when, can be equally intricate, and we’re increasingly helping businesses orchestrate their overall financial logic. We first entered this space with Billing, which grew over time into our Revenue and Finance Automation (RFA) suite, bringing together Billing, Tax, Revenue Recognition, and more.

[ … ] Not shown: A worked example of billing complexity, and a customer anecdote.

While conversations like these initially surprised us, we have gradually come to realize that the reason all of this is hard is because what seems like a mere finance challenge is actually a much broader systems problem⁶ (Editorial note 6)Editorial · 6Known at the timeRecasting billing as a systems problem moves Stripe from a fee on each payment to the logic around every payment: pricing, tax, proration and revenue recognition. That widens the market and deepens lock-in, since a business that keeps its whole pricing history on Stripe is harder to move than one that only routes cards through it. The cost is a fight with established billing and finance software, which the letter does not name.—one that touches most facets of your product, business model, and core processes. If you build your billing infrastructure the right way, you can achieve the triple benefits of reducing your operating costs, growing revenue faster, and providing a better customer experience. And if not, well, you end up forlornly restricting your market coverage.

[ … ] Not shown: Recent additions to the suite.

Businesses using Stripe for their revenue automation include Roblox, Figma, OpenAI, Atlassian, and Nasdaq. Overall, these products are being used by hundreds of thousands of businesses, and we expect the suite’s annual revenue run rate to pass $500 million over the next year⁷ (Fact note 7)Fact · 7With hindsightThe 2024 letter reported against this line: “As we forecast in our 2023 letter, Stripe’s Revenue and Finance Automation Suite, with Billing at its core, has now passed a $500 million revenue run rate.” The 2025 letter said the Revenue suite, which the acquired Metronome joined, “is on track to hit an annual run rate of $1 billion this year”.SourcesStripeStripe’s 2024 annual letter27 Feb 2025StripeStripe’s 2025 annual letter24 Feb 2026.

[ … ] Not shown: Enterprise customers and their patterns.

Although VC funding in 2023 hit its lowest levels since 2018, we’ve actually seen record startup formation across Stripe. (Besides the US, the biggest increases have come from the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada.)

[ … ] Not shown: Startup revenue trends, product updates and Stripe Atlas.

In 2023, the influx of AI companies onto Stripe grew even larger. Twice as many AI companies went live on Stripe compared to 2022, including new trailblazers like Perplexity and Mistral. They join leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Midjourney, which continue to expand their offerings and launch new products with Stripe. Aggregate revenue from AI companies grew by 249% in 2023⁸ (Fact note 8)Fact · 8With hindsightHere AI appears as a group of customers. A year later the founders credited Stripe’s own models: “We attribute this year’s rapid growth in part to our long-standing investments in building machine learning and artificial intelligence into our products.” Stripe also said it counted 78% of the Forbes AI 50 as customers.SourceStripeStripe’s 2024 annual letter27 Feb 2025, and, of course, AI was a major tailwind for countless companies across Stripe that do not self-identify as “AI companies” per se.

While headlines inevitably index on the most legible figures, such as declining venture dollars, our net assessment is that the startup ecosystem is more vibrant than ever before.

[ … ] Not shown: Why payments reliability has lagged.

Our view is that Stripe should be the most reliable part of a business’s stack.⁹ (Fact note 9)Fact · 9With hindsightStripe reported that from Black Friday through Cyber Monday 2024 it processed 465 million transactions and more than $31 billion, its largest four-day period, and that its API “maintained an uptime of more than 99.9999%”. These are Stripe’s own measurements.SourceStripeBusinesses processed more than $31 billion on Stripe from Black Friday through Cyber Monday3 Dec 2024 During Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2023 (BFCM), the highest-load part of any year, Stripe maintained uptime in excess of 99.999% while processing more than 300 million transactions. Total BFCM volume was $18.6 billion—our largest four-day period to date—and more than 31,000 businesses had their best day ever on Stripe.

[ … ] Not shown: How Stripe deploys code and handles incidents; sectors it is watching.

The improving mindset is a powerful thing. The internet economy is seeing tremendous progress thanks to it, and we try to bring it to our small corner at Stripe to deliver better financial infrastructure through many small investments that compound over many years.

[ … ] Not shown: Stripe Sessions, and a tribute to Charlie Munger.