Stripe Announced That it Exceeded $1 Trillion in Total Payment Volume in 2023

Fintech giant Stripe has announced that it surpassed $1 trillion in total payment volume in 2023, up 25% from 2022.

This was published in the company’s 2023 annual letter, which provided updates and shared insights into its approach to reliability.

At $1 trillion, the output of businesses that run on Stripe sums to roughly 1% of global GDP. The payment giant disclosed that the cash flow in 2023 was robust and it expects to be again in 2024.

This threshold according to Stripe is important because it allows the company to invest for the long term, building what it believes its users will need 10 years from now, without regard for the natural volatility of capital markets.

Notably, Co-founders of the company Patrick and John Collison attributed the growth to Stripe’s enterprise business, fast-growing startups adopting its products, billing, and tax services.

Speaking on the company’s annual report for 2023 Stripe president John Collinson said in an interview,

“We spent a lot of time focusing on that top-line growth. We spent all of last year with people predicting all manner of doom and gloom”, he said, adding that so far, consumer spending has held up real well”.

Part of Stripe’s 2023 annual letter reads,

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

“Perhaps as a result of the tighter funding environment, entrepreneurs are focusing on monetizing faster and enabling profitable growth as soon as possible. Startups founded in 2022, the most recent year where we have a full year of analyzable data, are 60% more likely to start collecting revenue within their first year, and 57% more likely to process $1 million within their first year, than those founded in 2019.

“Checkout and Payment Links are the most common products used by startups on Stripe since they combine power with simplicity. This year, we’ve made Checkout and Payment Links more customizable, with custom fields to collect tailored information like delivery instructions or order numbers, support for no-cost orders, new buy buttons, limits for subscriptions to avoid duplicative subscriptions, and payment link limits, such that a payment link expires after a specific number of payments.

“With Embedded Check-out, we’ve also found a way to implement a very long-time feature request: you can now place Checkout directly on your site, without a redirect. Today, one in six new Delaware corporations incorporates with Stripe Atlas, and, to date, the 50,000+ companies that have started with Atlas are on pace to collectively earn $5 billion a year in revenue.

“We continue to make Atlas the simplest way to start a startup, now filing your 83(b) election for you, a critical tax step once easily missed by founders. We’re also seeing more cross-border founding teams in the businesses being built with Atlas: this year, a record 21% of new companies with multiple founders have founders residing in different countries.

“For example, the founders of Dust Moto, an electric dirt bike company, reside in Bend, OR, and London, UK. They are set to release their first bike, the Model 1, in the summer of 2025. In 2023, the influx of Al companies onto Stripe grew even larger. Twice as many Al companies went live on Stripe compared to 2022, including new trailblazers like Perplexity and Mistral.

“They join leaders like OpenAl, Anthropic, and Midjourney, which continue to expand their offerings and launch new products with Stripe. Aggregate revenue from Al companies grew by 249% in 2023, and, of course, Al was a major tailwind for countless companies across Stripe that do not self-identify as “Al 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.”