Stripe Sessions 2025: Payments Industry Takeaways | Congrify

By Marco Conte

Stripe Sessions 2025 Takeaways

Last week we participated in the Stripe Session at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, the event proved to be full of new product announcements (some of which were already familiar to the industry insiders) and made a lot of noise in the payments industry. A great location with stellar keynotes and interviews, with Silicon Valley legends such as Mark Zuckerberg and Sir Jony Ivy on stage, the same stage that saw Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone 17 years ago.

Why Stripe Session 2025 can bring a change in the pace of the payments industry?

That Stripe is one of the main innovators of the payments industry is not news itself, a company that brings the pure Silicon Valley spirit into an industry that 10 years ago was mainly a territory of traditional financial players, but what Stripe is shaking right now can be a milestone of the payments industry.

It comes all to 3 topics:

• AI in payments
• Stablecoins to replace outdated money movements
• Interconnections between payment players

AI in the payments industry

The question it’s not IF, but it’s WHEN and HOW. Like any other tech company and Silicon Valley-based enterprise, Stripe is looking at how to embrace Agentic AI to differentiate itself in the payments industry. This has been at the center of the debate in almost any discussion, and it’s heavily reflected in some product updates that the company has brought to the table.

It’s clear that AI is here to shake traditional industries and the whole technology world, the only question is how certain parts will be changed, because it’s not a matter of IF, it’s a matter of how users can take full advantage from agents that can work for them and can be leveraged in the payments industry.

Stripe is actively exploring the integration of AI across multiple facets of its platform. This includes everything from lightweight AI-powered documentation assistants to a more advanced co-pilot that can help write risk rules within Stripe Radar. The company is also experimenting with agentic workflows for smarter and more autonomous dispute management. Looking ahead, Stripe is considering offering the infrastructure to support end-to-end buyer flows powered entirely by autonomous agents.

Stablecoins

That Stripe has invested heavily in Stablecoins is something visible, a $ 1.1B acquisition with Bridge can simply confirm that. Another historical moment was John Collison talking with Mark Zuckerberg about the differences between Stripe doing this now and Meta attempting in 2019 with Libra, which failed probably because the timing wasn’t right and Meta is not a payments company at the end.

But what can be the reasons for Stripe to really focus on this and why it is a game changer for them?

• With the global set of customers that Stripe has, the need of speeding payouts in multiple currencies can be a true game changer. Imagine better currency exchange rates or different conditions for near real-time funds availability, the dream of any CFO or Treasurer.
• Stablecoins as a new payment method for the end consumer and businesses. Beside being much faster and cheaper, stablecoins can be a good alternative for end-users and businesses using Stripe balances. Stripe has announced that companies can now directly send payments using their stripe balance accounts, which basically brings stripe into the first steps of becoming a more structured banking partner for their customers, as well now businesses can issue Credit Cards, which is a massive changer in the payments industry (it has been mainly white-labeling debit cards from other payment service providers). There’s no doubt that stablecoins will have a role to play in enabling these new functionalities.
• Stripe becoming an end-customer money transfer service? With such an infrastructure being established, it would not be a surprise if Stripe itself would decide to compete directly with banks in the US or money transfer solutions such as Western Union or Wise. It will be very interesting if this will happen.

Interconnections between payment players

Stripe has announced their new Payment orchestration functionality, which allows them to compete directly with other payment orchestration companies such as Primer, Spreedly or IxoPay, to offer transaction routing and cascading capabilities.

While payment gateway and acquirer interconnections are not a big news (it’s quite common to see major payment gateways routing transactions to multiple acquirers depending on geography and customers) this new push from Stripe positions them in becoming the easy choice as a gateway solution and de-risks them from taking financial responsibilities as an acquirer, especially when some of the merchants that process with Stripe might not be qualifiable anymore (imagine the scenario where Stripe instead of closing your merchant account would say “unfortunately you cannot use Stripe acquiring services anymore, but you can go to another payment service provider while using our gateway”).

As well it’s a bet where Stripe wants to bechmark itself and its technological capabilities against the market, to show merchants their level of performances.

Stripe opening up some of its core functionalities such as Stripe’s Radar to be used as a stand-alone solution is another example of how Stripe is trying to position itself as a stand-alone gateway when merchants are looking at using multiple payment service providers. This helps them to compete directly with merchants fraud solution providers such as Forter, Kount or Riskified.

Why are we excited at Congrify about those announcements?

At Congrify, we’re thrilled about Stripe’s bold moves because they signal a dynamic shift in the payments landscape, creating both opportunities and challenges that we’re uniquely positioned to address. Here’s why:

• Embracing multi-acquirer complexity: Stripe’s push toward payment orchestration and multi-acquirer setups validates the critical need for redundancy and flexibility in digital payments. This shift confirms the increased complexity in managing multiple payment service providers, from pricing models to transaction routing.
• Unlocking data silos: Stripe’s interconnected services, like standalone Radar or payment orchestration, enhance flexibility but will often leave merchants with fragmented data across providers. Critical insights—such as reconciliation, settlement details, and fee structures—can remain siloed and accessible only via the designated acquirers. Congrify’s platform consolidates these datasets, providing a unified view of transactions, fees, and payouts with enhanced intelligence. This enables merchants to make informed decisions and maintain control over their payment ecosystem.
• Driving payment optimization: The evolution of AI, stablecoins, and orchestration underscores the need for smarter payment strategies. With out Congrify’s payment analytics and intelligence platform, we allow merchants and platforms that embeed payments to consolidate all the fees, settlements and missing pieces of the puzzle. We’re excited to help businesses turn Stripe’s advancements into tangible competitive advantages.

These announcements reinforce our mission at Congrify to simplify and optimize the payments journey, ensuring merchants and platforms can harness the full potential of this rapidly evolving industry.