Stripe’s Head of NZ on how it plans to grow the GDP of the internet
In the world of Fintech Stripe is less scrappy startup and more the silverback gorilla.
With over a trillion dollars processed in 2024, 8000 employees worldwide and a $95b valuation this year, in the world of Fintech Stripe is less scrappy startup and more the silverback gorilla.
It’s upping its investment in New Zealand in 2025, and recently released its Annual Letter for 2025 – providing updates on its business performance, and insights into the company’s future direction.
Caffeine caught up with Stripe’s somewhat recent on the ground hire in NZ, Ben Hanna, to hear its plan to help startups modernise and digitally transform.
What separates Stripe from other financial services?
For small businesses, Stripe simplifies complex financial operations by providing an all-in-one platform that makes it easy to accept payments, manage finances, and scale growth, all through easy to integrate tools. This allows business owners to focus on other parts of their business like product development and customer relationships.
We are also focused on optimising the customer experience. We do this at a really fine level, where if you have an Apple Wallet or a Google Wallet, depending on which browser you're using, we'll present that correct payment option every time without the need for customer input. We use data as well to optimise authorisation rates… And then also data and AI machine learning when identifying, blocking, or flagging fraud. For fraud prevention, because of our scale, when a card makes a payment on Stripe, there is a 92% chance that card has been seen by Stripe before somewhere else on our network, meaning we can then compare this transaction to previous behaviour. So, if we see a card being used with a new email address, the very newness of the email address is suspicious
AI is transforming almost every aspect of the economy, how do you leverage it at Stripe?
We use data and AI machine learning when identifying, blocking, or flagging fraud. In 2024 for example, we reduced card testing, a type of fraudulent activity where criminals use automated systems to test stolen credit card numbers, on Stripe by over 80%, protecting our customers from tens of millions of fraudulent transactions.
We also launched an AI agent last year where you can embed payments, or the ability for an AI agent to both take and make payments used by Perplexity. They've got a shopping agent that will browse, and find the product that you want, and then make the payment on your behalf. When I think about AI’s ability to transform the way the internet economy works and about the internet as a whole, it has been designed for humans. AI agents on the other hand are able to navigate around the internet and act like a human, while operating at the pace of AI meaning there is an opportunity to speed up commerce.
While AI often eats up all the oxygen, you’re also very engaged in crypto - what use do you see for that technology in fintech?
We experimented pretty early with Bitcoin as a payment method, and we found that it wasn't actually well suited as a payment method. The volatility of the underlying asset meant that you would have a merchant taking a payment, and then by the time that the payment had settled, the value of what they were receiving could have changed significantly. Recently, though, we've seen the rise of stablecoin, a crypto based asset that's pegged to traditional fiat currencies we support. Used prominently by some of our users that have accounts in the United States, stablecoin’s are being used to make global money movement cheaper, faster and more secure.
We recently acquired a company called Bridge, the world’s leading stablecoin platform, that enables businesses to accept stablecoins. Worth $1.1 billion USD, it's the largest crypto acquisition in recent history which indicates Stripe’s committed to modernising the money movement space in New Zealand and abroad.
What are Stripe's plans for growth in New Zealand and where are the greatest opportunities for startups here?
To give you a little bit of context on our presence in New Zealand, we've been here since 2017. Over the last couple of years, we've seen double-digit growth of net new customers on Stripe in New Zealand, and strong revenue growth as well. We're investing in building the team here, including hiring Oscar Harvey, who has global experience in tax payments and SaaS having spent more than three years at Klarna. He starts with us in April to help lead the charge for our startup and SMB segment. I think the biggest opportunity for New Zealand businesses is outside of New Zealand. If you’re a company with aspirations to grow significantly, then it’s important to start thinking about going global from day one and taking advantage of the technology which is now at your fingertips.