Stripe to launch its own third-party app marketplace

25 May 2022

Image: © sdx15/Stock.adobe.com

More than 50 apps will initially be available on the marketplace, including one that lets users convert Stripe payments into bitcoin in real time.

Stripe has launched a new tool allowing third-party developers to create apps that can be added onto users’ Stripe dashboard.

Stripe Apps lets businesses design their own app to customise their Stripe dashboard. These apps can also be uploaded onto the new Stripe App Marketplace to be shared with the fintech’s userbase.

The payments giant said this helps address a “fundamental challenge” for growing businesses and has been a top request from its customers.

“Stripe Apps makes it possible for businesses to customise Stripe for the first time,” the fintech said in a statement yesterday (24 May).

“It also enables automated sharing of contextual information across apps, keeping systems of record in sync and giving users a fuller view of their business.”

Users will be able to download apps from the Stripe App Marketplace in the coming weeks, and it will have more than 50 apps available at launch. Many of these apps are designed for core business functions such as accounting, analytics, e-signatures and marketing.

It will include apps from DocuSign, Dropbox, Intercom, Mailchimp, Ramp and Xero. Stripe said it will add more partners and apps over time, along with apps in other languages.

Looking at cryptocurrency again

One of the apps coming to the marketplace allows users to convert incoming payments to bitcoin in real time. Developed by payment processor OpenNode, the app will allow users to automatically convert a fixed percentage of incoming Stripe payments to bitcoin, or manually convert any amount.

This marks another move in the cryptocurrency space for Stripe, which dropped bitcoin in 2018 due to the cryptocurrency’s volatility and lengthy transaction times.

Last October, the fintech took a cautious step back into crypto when it started hiring for a dedicated cryptocurrency engineering team. Since then, it has partnered with global cryptocurrency exchange FTX and tested crypto payouts with Twitter.

Stripe, founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison, is continuing to roll out services that go beyond the payments processing it was originally built on.

It recently appointed Microsoft veteran James Phillips as its new president of financial services to help expand its portfolio further.

Earlier this month, the company launched Stripe Financial Connections in the US to allow businesses to establish direct connections with the bank accounts of their customers. Last week, Stripe Data Pipeline was also launched in the US, which syncs Stripe data with data warehouses Amazon Redshift and Snowflake Data Cloud.

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Leigh Mc Gowran is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com