August 18, 2025 • 41 mins
"APAC represents 40% of global GDP. So you can see that there's huge opportunity in a very, very diverse region. The needs of Japan are different to the needs of China. India is exploding with SaaS, software, AI. Australia one of our larger markets, again, very different. And so Southeast Asia, the complexities of Asia make it a joy to work in." - Paul Harapin
Fresh out of the studio, Paul Harapin, Chief Revenue Officer for Asia Pacific and Japan at Stripe, joined us in a conversation discussing Stripe's explosive growth in the region that represents 40% of global GDP. Paul dived deep into how Stripe is revolutionizing commerce through AI and stablecoins, sharing fascinating customer stories in the Asia Pacific and Japan. He delved into Stripe's current innovations specifically on agentic commerce toolkits, virtual card issuing, and adaptive pricing solutions that are transforming how businesses scale across the dynamic Asia Pacific region. Last but not least, Paul shared the key trends in AI-powered payments and stablecoin adoption, defining what great would look like for Stripe's user-first approach to building the financial infrastructure of the internet economy in APAC.
Episode Highlights
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Paul Harapin
[02:30] Building tech companies, helping Silicon Valley expand Asia
[03:27] How Paul talked himself into Stripe role
[04:30] Key career lessons: people and passion matter most
[07:05] Stripe's mission to increase GDP of internet
[09:00] Asia represents 40% of global GDP opportunity
[12:42] AI transformation like discovering fire, very early cycle
[14:12] Agentic commerce toolkits downloaded thousands times weekly
[18:04] Virtual card issuing for secure AI transactions
[19:00] Stripe Link enables six second checkout process
[21:26] Adaptive pricing increases conversion by 18 percent
[24:23] Bridge acquisition brings stablecoin payment capabilities
[26:00] Stablecoin enables stability in volatile currency markets
[27:00] Japanese car exporter Zimbabwe cash bag example
[29:20] Digital currency adoption growing at consumer level
[31:00] Working closely with regulators across Asia Pacific
[33:40] Asia's fast digitizing economy leads global innovation
[34:05] India's UPI 10 billion transactions forecasted 100 billion
[36:30] How Stripe helps businesses in Asia Pacific to scale
[38:42] User-first founding principle drives everything at Stripe
[40:20] Closing
Profile: Paul Harapin, Chief Revenue Officer, Asia Pacific & Japan, Stripe. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulharapin/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
APAC represents 40% of global GDP.
So you can see that there's hugeopportunity in a very, very
diverse region. The needs of Japan are different
to the needs of China. India is exploding with SAS
software, AI, Australia, one of our larger markets, again, very
different. Southeast Asia The complexities
(00:21):
of Asia make it a joy to work in.
Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to
dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media
in Asia. I'm Bernard Liu, and today we're
going to explore how the Internet economy is driving
Asia's next wave of innovation. With me today is Paul Haropin,
(00:43):
chief revenue Officer for Asia Pacific and Japan at Strike.
We'll dive into how STRIKE is shaping the future of digital
e-commerce through AI and stablecoins and what this means for
businesses and consumers in the region.
So, Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you, Bernard.
It's great to be here. OK, so I've done some work to
look at your background and I want to start always as your
(01:05):
first time guest on my show. We'll look at your origin story.
Tell me, how do you start your career in technology?
Well, back in Sydney I finished Sydney University.
I did a economics degree and back then you had all the
employers come to campus and I thought I'd probably work in
finance industry. I wasn't 100% sure, but I wanted
(01:28):
to make sure I filled my time ofinterview so I could practice.
So I put all the banks down, themerchant banks, etcetera.
I even, I even did an interview with the Australian Federal
Police for an undercover role, just out of interest, but I
added IBM to the list back when I finished high school.
There were no computers in high school and even when I joined
(01:49):
IBM, it was only mainframes, no PCs.
But the IBM guy did an interviewwhere a very important thing of
discovery for anyone in sales, where he didn't tell me all
about IBM. He actually asked me about what
I wanted to do. And I always wanted to travel,
(02:11):
coming from my father was a refugee from World War 2 into
Australia. We didn't have a lot of money,
so we didn't have holidays, we didn't travel.
And I, my grandmother, though, gave me this view of the world
and I always wanted to travel and potentially be a diplomat.
And he just said, if you join IBM, we'll train you.
(02:32):
We have officers all around the world and have the opportunity
to travel. And so I did the second
interview, the third interview ended up joining IBM and I
worked out after six years that big company environment wasn't
really for me. And I joined a startup and I
just did startups Ever since I realized building the tech
companies and helping Silicon Valley startups expand into
(02:55):
Asia, that was where my passion lay.
And so I just, I've done that now for many, many decades.
Well, you have held leadership roles across major tech
companies VM, Ware, VCE and DOMObefore joining Strike.
What inspired you to make the leap from enterprise software to
non financial infrastructure? So for me, it often comes down
(03:20):
to two things. One is the people and two is the
opportunity and what's there. And I, I'm always wanting to
learn. That's a great thing about
startups. You're always learning.
So I was actually interviewing with another company to run
their Asia business. And my good friend who I also
worked with at VM Ware would have been my boss again.
(03:44):
And so I was doing the interviewall the way up through the
global CEO. And he said to me as we
finished, he said, hey, would you be a reference?
I said, sure, who for? He said, for me, I'm into what
do you mean? I'm coming to join you.
He said, well, I'm interviewing to be CRO for Stripe.
And during the interview with our CEO, Stripe CEOI said, hey,
(04:09):
who runs Asia for Stripe? And he said, well, funny you
asked, there is nobody at the moment we need someone.
And thus I talked myself into a role and MM Clayville, who's
very well known in the tech industry, joined the CRO and I
joined three weeks later, and that was almost five years ago.
Wow, that's interesting story. So I know Mike when he was in
(04:31):
AWS, yeah, and he was the CEO and when I had that conversation
when he was still the CRO and then we were talking a lot about
Stripe. But before we get into the main
subject of day, I want to ask you, looking back at your career
journey across Stripe and going through startups, big tech, what
are the key lessons you can share with my audience about
(04:53):
your career journey? I think what's important to me
is the people is everything, regardless of what your product
is, your service, it's the people you surround yourself and
with. And I think I've had a very high
quality bar across my whole career and I've been very lucky
(05:15):
to work for some amazing companies like, you know, Tivoli
in the early in the early 90s, mid 90s to VM Ware and now
Stripe and some others as well. And it's the quality of people
that resonates more than most. And it's really hard to get into
Stripe. We hold a really high quality
bar, which I love. So from the youngest employee
(05:38):
to, you know, the old people like me and maybe I slipped
through the gaps, but everyone is high quality, everyone is
passionate and it's just a joy to come to work.
Then it's really about making sure that you put everything in
to what you do as a start up because if you don't, you'll
never be as successful as you could do.
(05:59):
I was looking back on this with someone the other day in the
discussion on a CEOA paid CEO versus a founder CEO.
And I think where I've been ableto be successful is whilst I'm
not the founder of this company or VM Ware or anything, I've
come in relatively early and I run with a founder mindset.
(06:24):
I treat it like it is my companyand I did start it.
And I think that's the difference because I, I would
recommend to people that even inthis sort of role, you drive to
do the best thing for the company, not the best thing
always for yourself. And sometimes there's that bit
of conflict, but people and passion really is a summary.
(06:45):
There's a great lesson here because I think people
undervalues loyalty to the organization, doing for the
organization beyond yourself. I think there's a great lesson.
So I'm going to get to the mains.
Of the day. Where we talk about strike AI,
I'm more. Comfortable talking about
strike. OK.
So may let me set the stage withStripe.
Stripe is synonymous with seamless, frictionless and safe
(07:09):
payments. OK, many businesses including
myself and all forms of shapes all, all using Stripe for
payments, but the company has already evolved beyond that.
So maybe to help my audience to baseline, can you provide a high
level view of Stripes mission and its role in enabling the
Internet economy across the Asia?
(07:29):
Yeah. Our goal really is to drive and
increase the GDP of the Internetby building programmable
financial services and financialinfrastructure that enables
merchants of any size from the smallest start up to the largest
global multibillion dollar corporation to be able to do
(07:50):
business in any country in the world.
And to do business not just simply in taking payments, but
being able to engage in all the surrounding capability of that
money movement across the globe.We have a suite of software, SAS
software we call our revenue andfinancial automation suite,
(08:10):
which is becoming really even more relevant with the advent of
AI and usage based billing, SAS type billing, subscription
billing, the invoicing around that you need to charge, collect
and file taxes. We do that in over 100
countries, bank reconciliation in store terminals and much
(08:30):
more. So we're really payments is, is
the foundation of the company. But that financial
infrastructure, we've built a whole surrounding capability of
software services and hardware that really delivers really
strong outcomes for customers through a very strong API driven
platform. So I have always go to different
(08:52):
restaurants. Sometimes I actually even seen
the Stripes POS systems. Are we in place?
So Asia is probably 1 of Stripesfastest growing regions, very
similar to a lot of other tech businesses.
What's driving this growth and are there any unique challenges
and opportunities that Asia present as compared to all the
other markets out there? All of the above, Bernard, when
(09:16):
we say we're trying to grow the GDP of the Internet, a stat from
last year is the strike process,$1.4 trillion in global revenue.
That represents 1.3% of global GDP.
APEC represents 40% of global GDP.
So you can see that there's hugeopportunity in a very, very
(09:38):
diverse region. And the needs of Japan are
different to the needs of China.India is exploding with SAS
software, AI, Australia, one of our larger markets, again very
different. And so Southeast Asia, the
complexities of Asia make it a joy to to work in.
I think you see in Southeast Asia, one of the opportunities
(10:01):
is Southeast Asia. India is it's a world leader in
local payment methods, wallets, real time payment capability.
It's it's really leading and notjust for itself actually in
influencing what happens in the rest of the world.
You see Brazil now has peaks, well peaks like UPI in India is
(10:23):
effectively A partnership they've taken, they've worked
together to deliver this real time network.
Japan is really exciting becauseit's still very much a cash
driven society, very high in store retail and coming through
with a platform economy which iswhere we're very strong across
the rest of Asia and the rest ofthe world.
(10:44):
You mentioned the fact that you go into a restaurant and see a
Stripe terminal. All of that is driven by a
platform partner that is delivering services to that cafe
or to that restaurant and Stripeenables all the financial
component of their SAS offering and platform offering into that
market. So the opportunity here is
(11:05):
tremendous where we're looking at some of our banking as a
service product, Stride Capital for lending card issuing, many
of our customers are using that and we're bringing bringing that
here to Asia. So I think the challenges are is
it is sort of an inverse of thatis, is it is a complex region.
Every country is different. Every country has their own
(11:28):
regulatory framework. Recently you see the Reserve
Bank in Australia has spoken about banning surcharging, while
many other countries don't have surcharging.
Countries like India, Thailand, their reserve banks and
governments are trying to uplifttheir community.
And how do you do that via digital payments?
(11:48):
Because that's really changes the world for a lot of people
who are less fortunate. They're unbanked or underbanked,
they can't get credit, they don't have a bank account, but
with a phone base wallet, they can actually partake in digital
transactions. And so we're just very proud to
to be supporting a lot of these communities and merchants who
(12:09):
grow their business, not just locally, but globally.
A lot of our business, particularly here in APEC
traverses the rest of the world.The ability to start a company
in Singapore and within a week be processing with customers in
40 countries around the world. If you wish to simply by, you
know clicking a few buttons in the Stripe dashboard is
(12:31):
fantastic and we see customers take advantage of that all the
time. I actually like the experience.
I always enjoy looking at my Stripe dashboard, so I want to
come to talking about about one of the most biggest topic is
about AI and Njentic AI for Internet commerce.
I think without doubt AI in the last three years has been the
most hot topic and I think Stripe has actually integrated a
(12:53):
lot into its products. Let's talk about what this means
for businesses. How is AI actually transforming
the way how businesses are managing, say, payments and
fraud prevention today? Yeah, I think on the AI topic,
we're very early in the cycle. You know, I think it's, it's
like we've discovered fire and we're trying to workout.
(13:15):
Well, this is interesting, but what do we do with it?
And it's moving so fast that youcan have a conversation with
someone and three weeks later. So things have changed and the
AI companies are moving really fast, whether they're Silicon
Valley based AI, China based AI companies, India that I think is
the triumvirate of where the majority of AI companies will
(13:36):
will come from. Just the momentum in those three
countries is quite phenomenal. The way Stripe has approached
this, our foundation is a company of self-service.
So a merchant like yourself, Bernard, you probably logged on
to Stripe, set up your own account and now you were
processing and taking payments without the involvement of
(13:56):
anyone else. And because we can do that, an
AI agent is really just another self-serve customer.
And so we have foundationally built our company without
knowing it for the future of AI and agentic commerce.
In addition to that, we've builtand continued to iterate and
(14:17):
build really fast agentic commerce toolkits.
They're being downloaded, you know, thousands of times a week
from merchants who are starting to build in the capability of
agentic into their platform. Now again, as I said, still
early days, you'll see some capability out there.
There's simple things like most checkouts of a website are built
(14:38):
for humans. They're not built for AI.
And so the AI agent can check you out, but it actually has to
fill in the fields like you would as a human.
Now we're helping change that, but that requires a change on
the on the e-commerce side, not just the stripe side.
And so that evolution is happening at at scale.
(14:59):
On the fraud side, we built our,our fraud management software
using AI and machine learning, you know, years ago.
So it's built on that framework and we continue to iterate on
its capability as AI increases. We, we're using AI internally at
Stripe across a whole range of vectors from managing fraud to
(15:21):
making sure that a customer using Stripe can have their
customer check out and be presented with the right payment
method at the right time. For example, and if you're
buying a, a couch, you may be presented with a buy now pay
later option automatically because AI sees that that is the
biggest converting option for that type of purchase.
(15:44):
If you're, you know, buying a $30 T-shirt, it could be a
credit card that's put up or a, you know, a shoppy pay wallet or
something like this. So I think for us, there's two
aspects. How do we leverage AI and
continue to build AI into all ofour software and infrastructure
so that we're producing better performance, better results,
(16:07):
better fraud management, better conversion experience for our
customers. And then how do we enable
agentic commerce for our customers, particularly the AI
companies and retail merchants so that that the process can
happen rapidly without, without them having to worry about the
insurance and outs of how all the payment flows work.
(16:29):
We just provide the infrastructure that allows them
to execute on their business model of AI that they wish to,
and everyone will do it slightlydifferently.
I think it's interesting, you brought up a very interesting
example which I didn't thought about.
Like say these days people go toa church GBT and they look for
different products in e-commercesite.
And then of course the question is whether church GBT is going
(16:51):
to put a buy button there. And if there's a buy button, the
agent needs to interact directlywith the payment system.
And I thought that when you use the example of how the agent,
the agentic AI fill the forms for the fields and then get the
credit card and then do the payment transaction, it is
interesting because now you're giving the agentic AI some form
(17:12):
of some degree of autonomy, I guess.
How would you define agentic AI and it's importance for strike
to actually facilitate that agent AI flow in the bigger
process right? I mean fraud detection is 1
aspect, the other Of course there are other aspects where
the AI actually helps with all the other parts of strikes
businesses. Yeah, I think it's, it's
(17:33):
critical for us. I mean, we have such a deep
focus on this like nothing I've ever seen before.
A partly because we see the potential as being world
changing. I also think that it's
everything is moving really quick.
So this is not a time to be sitting back thinking about
what's going on because it's happening as as we go.
(17:55):
And so there's an opportunity for us as a very fast moving
innovative company to to jump into that.
The example that we were talkingabout there is as your AI agent
or interface will now not only show you, you know, the best
glassware that you're looking tobuy and all the options, but
(18:17):
will allow you to purchase. You give them your credit card.
They are then able to use Stripes issuing virtual card
capability to then create multiple virtual cards just for
the amounts that are being transacted, execute on those and
then they're disposed of. And so your card is securely on
file with the AI agent tokenizedby Stripe, but they issue
(18:41):
virtual cards off the back of that.
So your card is not going to allof these retailers, it's a
virtual card that's going through.
So building that flow with the capability.
So it's, it all happens seamlessly.
In addition, just to the, the normal continuing checkout
capability where we optimize everything about the conversion
(19:03):
ratio so that as any human or agent hit the checkout, the
experience is optimal to convertas quickly as possible.
We have a, we have a wallet called Stripe Link.
It enables you to check out within 6 seconds.
You can use it, you know, to payfor your Uber in America or book
your Airbnb. And that opportunity now is
(19:26):
benefits the merchant because when you want to buy and you
have the excitement to purchase,nothing gets in your way because
we know 50% of people abandoned a car purchase when it's too
frictionful. You get a, you check out, you
get a code, you hit the code andyou're done.
And so that's where all the innovation is happening for us,
as well as a lot of the internalwork on fraud, optimizing our
(19:50):
own engineering teams and leveraging products so that we
can develop faster, more products faster with even high
quality. Interesting.
I was just reminded of the fact that I was using Stripe link to
actually pay my production team direct.
Fantastic, using my thank you. You should be a reference.
Call 6 seconds is pretty good. So I think 11 interesting thing
(20:12):
that you brought up during this whole flow conversation is that
there is also some differentiation in terms of
stripes approach, right? Because it's no no longer just
being a traditional automation or just have a direct
transaction, but or even rule based.
Now it seems to me that Strat will be able to do adaptive type
of payment flows as compared to the past.
(20:33):
Am I right? To you are in many ways a good
example of that is we call adaptive pricing, which is the
ability for a consumer to check out and maybe it's a
cross-border transaction. I'll use the example of, you
know, we're here in Singapore. Maybe I want to book a hotel in
Thailand. It presents Thai baht costs.
(20:55):
I don't know what that means in Singapore dollars.
And now I have to get a calculator and FX and try and
work it out or it gives me a sort of a SGD number, but it's
not really SGDI end up paying inbaht.
What adaptive pricing does is able to see where you are and
present you with those prices. And if I'm here in Singapore, I
(21:15):
can check out with a Singapore price on my Singapore credit
card and I'm charged Singapore dollars, but the merchant gets
the Thai baht that was there. And so we manage that process
for them. So it's very, again very
seamless and just simple things like that, which looks simple,
but a very complex to build result.
(21:35):
On average so far in 18% increase in execution of a
transaction and 18% increase in business for anybody is a big
increase in revenue. So they're the sorts of things
we're very proud of and that that's just one example of the
many innovations. Any other more exciting AI power
capabilities that strike maybe building for businesses and
(21:58):
changes how businesses and smallbusinesses or even large
enterprises? I think there will be and we'll
talk to a few of those companiesat our striped tour event coming
up. And so maybe you can put those
links in your. Podcast.
Afterwards, I can't talk about them just now, but definitely
over the next couple of weeks we'll OK, we'll see some of
those be announced. I'll be back get you a.
(22:19):
Of the short talk about happy tohappy, OK.
So what's the one thing you knowabout the application of AI in
commerce that very few people dofrom strips perspective?
Good question. I think it's really the speed
of, of how organizations are trying to work through the
(22:40):
complexities of these transactions because there's
many, there's many things that go into financial services.
People often think that, hey, I go onto a website and they give
them my credit card. And that's really simple.
Well, there's a world of complexity of regulations,
government controls, money laundering management, credit
risks, all the fraud risks that go on with people trying to do
(23:03):
things. And I think a lot of people
don't understand the underlying complexities.
It's sort of akin to the traditional iceberg picture
where you see that bit of iceberg sitting out of the
water, but underneath there's somuch.
And that's how we've we've founda strike was really to take away
and obfuscate all of that complexity of the global
(23:27):
financial system so that merchants and software companies
and platforms can really focus on what's important to them,
which is their business, not have to worry about the
complexity of this system. Because if you imagine going
back 20 years, even sooner, actually setting up a global
organization in multiple countries was highly expensive.
(23:50):
You had to have companies and structures and banking
relationships and everything in those countries.
It's what slowed global commerce.
And you can see now that with Stripe, Stripe customers last
year grew 38% over the Fortune 500, which grew about 5%.
(24:13):
Well, and so the growth leverageof using Stripe and it's ability
to scale really quickly is trulydelivering on our promise which
is to increase the GDP of the Internet.
So I want to talk about stable coins which some people say is
the charger became moment of crypto.
I've been a great user of stablecoins over the years being a
(24:34):
crypto person. So I think 1 interesting thing
that happened last year was the acquisition of Bridge, yeah,
which I think was probably 1 of I think Stripes most interesting
acquisition. But we're not going to talk
about that. We're going to talk about how
Stripe has started to integrate stable coins into his payments
stack and I want to unhack that.So maybe to start, why did
(24:56):
Stripe has now decide to supportstable coin transactions now?
And what problem are you trying to solve for the customers?
I think to really appreciate this is as probably some of the
US audience may not think about how difficult payments are done
in our part of the world. Yeah.
And stable coin seems to be a very emerging markets kind of
(25:17):
phenomenon. Maybe you can talk about that.
Yeah, I think it was an excitingmove, us really diving deeply
into stablecoin and we've since brought another company called
Privy which has more wallet, crypto wallet based
infrastructure. But just to focus on stablecoin
as a whole, I think we can simplify a couple of things.
(25:38):
Our region, Latin America, a number of other regions.
Currencies can fluctuate. Money movement can be difficult.
The old World financial system is inherently hundreds of years
old and you know, we're using systems like SWIFT to send
money. You know, you fill in forms and
(25:59):
and file that and the money, themoney turns up three days later.
I think what stablecoin enables is 1.
The as it's name suggests, the security and stability of the
currency in an initial case it'sa USDCUS dollar pegged
(26:19):
stablecoin. So a company, for example, that
we have like Star Link that may wish to transact in Argentina
where the currencies fluctuate dramatically.
They can use stablecoin for the transaction and now they know
it's stable significantly. They can also move that money
(26:40):
rapidly using the stablecoin infrastructure.
In fact, one of our team was in Bolivia the other day and the
duty free at the airport in Bolivia only accepted stablecoin
of which is amazing. And then the ability now there's
companies that have wallets. We've announced a deal with Visa
where merchants can also create Visa cards that you pay, you can
(27:03):
pay in store off the back of a stablecoin.
I also had a a Japanese customerI met a little while ago whose
business is sending second hand cars to Africa, the Caribbean
and many such countries. And his biggest, his biggest
business problem was the fact that his customers say in
(27:23):
Zimbabwe would have to come to the office carrying bags of U.S.
dollars cash and pay security guards with machine guns.
And then the secondary problem is he's now got bags of cash
that he needs to send back to Japan.
And so the stable coin will, I think, rapidly disrupt the way
money moves around the world. The other side of this,
(27:46):
interestingly we're seeing a lotof interest and have done some
business already with large global corporations that have
offices around the world and very mature treasury departments
within their corporations actually looking to use
stablecoin to manage how their treasury floats around the
world. And so they're two initial use
(28:08):
cases that we think really mean that this disruption will flow
through. We're still on an early phase,
but if you look at bridges growth compared to Stripes early
growth, as Patrick talked about at our conference in May, it's
growing at a super fast rate, faster than Stripe did.
So we're really excited about the interest we're seeing in
(28:28):
stable coin, particularly in ourin our region here in APEC.
So Crossword Tree is now probably one of the massive
pinpoint for businesses in Asia.I think people do maybe not
appreciate this, but how can stable crimes make global
commerce more efficient and costeffective?
I think you brought out a very good point about some countries
with very volatile currency exchange rates that there's one
(28:50):
use the others to fight against inflation.
Are there any kind of how are there ways that stable currency
can become very impactful to thecommerce?
I think you'll start to see alsothat it floats down to the
consumer level. So we talked about, you know,
the volatility area, we talked about large corporations
managing treasury and float and being able to move stable coin.
(29:13):
And you'll see a growth of stable coin around the world.
You'll see that many countries are now exploring what this
means for them. I don't think any country can
divorce itself from the need of a digital currency.
And so again, we're early days in this, but I think you'll see
also consumers start to adopt stablecoin, particularly where
(29:35):
they might be travelling around the world, just want stability.
And so wallets that are backed by stablecoin with a, with a
credit card or debit card at the, at the front end is another
area that you'll start to see along with other encompassing
other crypto options as well. I think the challenge of crypto
(29:55):
with companies is it's volatility.
And the whole idea of stablecoinis to say, well, this stablecoin
is USDC. It's volatility is only matched
by the currency itself. And so I know if I grab my
currency in this country, immediately convert to
stablecoin, I now have a stable,a stable float to manage my
(30:15):
business with. So, so one thing that comes out
a lot is the, some regulators are still cautious about digital
assets. I, I think it's different
countries, right? So for example, now US have the
Genius Act and I think Singapore, Japan and some of the
more mature Asia PAC countries have very clear stable coin
(30:36):
regulation, but maybe some othercountries don't.
So how to strike? Think about, say, navigating,
say, compliance and. Trust while also.
Innovating and sort of bringing stable coin technology across
the region itself. Yeah, we think about it front of
mind. You know, we have a real focus
on being guardians of a financial ecosystem.
(30:56):
We have teams here in Singapore and Europe and America of people
that work very closely with the government.
I meet also regularly with MAS here in Singapore, Reserve Bank
in Australia. And you know, our, our role is
not to tell anyone what to do, but our role is to help educate
and show what's happening in themarket, provide some guidance
(31:18):
and support. We obviously have an opinion on
these things. But our role, whether it's
stablecoin or anything else, ourjob is to really help educate
and work with our regulators to get the best results for the
country and for the merchants sort of processing and building
their businesses there. I think with digital currencies,
(31:38):
again, when you have something that's disruptive, it's totally
different to the normal way of doing things that we've been
used to for hundreds of years. Governments and regulators quite
rightly, will take their time, try and understand what's
happening. Some will move faster than
others, others will be followersand that's that's all OK Stripe
(31:59):
will be supportive of of all of those countries so that we can
help help them with the decisions that they're making
and provide a global perspectiveas well.
So do you see stable coins as a complement to traditional
banking rules? Or it could be.
A complete disruption over the next decade, I mean not in the
perspective of being replacement, but just looking at
(32:22):
it from this current juncture and an extrapolate forward.
Yeah, I think, I think things will operate in tandem for a
while. And then based on adoption, the
disruption will happen faster oror slower than what we think.
You can never quite bet on thesethings, but just the speed of
the reliability and technological advancement that
(32:45):
stablecoin infrastructure bringsto the market, I think you'll
see it disrupt the whole range of money movement options.
You've seen it already even withsome traditional providers
making some some impacts. But stablecoin I think will
change the way people think about treasury management across
the globe. And I think for the better.
(33:08):
I think for the better. So I think now we should zoom
back out coming back to Asia as a dynamic region for both AI and
financial technology adoption. So I think now from your
perspective today, what makes Asia Pacific now a photo ground
for say AI driven commerce and digital payments?
I just think it's the, it's the pace and energy of the economies
(33:29):
here in AIPAC, as I mentioned earlier, we represent 40% of the
global GDP. You go to countries that are
moving so fast, be it Indonesia,India, China, Oh my God, I've
been in China and the energy andpace of invention is phenomenal.
(33:50):
Whether it's AI or it's self driving cars or robotics or you
know, passenger drones, all of these things are happening so
fast. So I think Asia is 1 a very fast
growing digitised economy. I think the fastest digitising
economy for payments in the world.
(34:10):
The speed of adoption is tremendously fast.
I believe we did around 10 billion transactions on UPI in
India, 10 billion transactions. That's forecast to be 100
billion by 2030 and probably will happen sooner.
And that's just one example of of the adoption here in
(34:31):
Singapore. Obviously we have Pay Now in
Australia, real time payments with Pay 2.
It's just so innovative here andso much energy as a region that
we can't not but ride this wave of AI and all the things that it
brings to us for our businesses,for our technology, for our
lives. Asia, there's there's no better
(34:52):
place to be living and working. My view anyway.
So how, how do you think say cultural or even regulatory
differences across the region ship how Stripe is going to
strategy in terms of rolling outall these things like AI or
stable coin technologies to the businesses and maybe to even the
(35:12):
individual consumers out there? Yeah.
Well, we really follow the regulators.
So, you know, our goal is to bring innovation to market,
obviously to do that in a very compliant way.
And so we're encouraging engagement on these areas.
We're seeing, we're working witha many of our AI customer
(35:34):
partners as well in terms of what they're doing and how
they're engaging with government.
Because obviously you can't turnon the news without people
talking about do we regulate AI?Do we not regulate how fast
should we do it? My view on this is everything
should have some guardrails around it.
By the time any government regulates AI today, it will have
(35:57):
changed so much, the regulationswill be almost irrelevant.
So being able to support governments in how they look at
these things, make them aware ofwhat's happening, what's
possible, how fast things are moving.
I think you start to put guardrails in place.
But it's, you know, as I, as I said at the beginning, we found
fire and you just can't regulatefire without really knowing what
(36:21):
it's doing. But the process and the
intellectual discussion and thought around the impacts of
AII think are very important for, you know, for every
community to discuss whether it's it's commerce base or it
has, you know, more social construct impacts that we need
to consider. So what's the one question that
you wish more people would ask you about?
(36:43):
Strike, But they don't. That's a really good question,
Bernard. What would you wonder?
What would you want them to say?Ask you?
I would love them to ask me. How can you help us do more with
the infrastructure that you've built?
Some will. Follow with that question, how
would you help me as a business such that you know Stripe can
(37:03):
help me to scale my business? Well, the things that we would
talk about Bernard, is, you know, what's your what's your
community that's purchasing fromyou?
Are they purchasing one off things?
Could you build a subscription model with them where they they
pay by what they're using? Which countries are you in?
Can we help make sure that when someone wishes to buy, buy
(37:25):
something from you in another country that they can buy in
their own local currency? So it's a seamless transaction.
They're all of the things that we'd have conversations around.
The stripe has built such a comprehensive platform and
infrastructure that there's manydiscussions to have.
And and the one thing that really always drives me crazy,
(37:47):
if someone says, hey, Stripes a payment gateway, yes, we are.
But that's like, you know, saying Amazon sells books.
Yes, they do. They also do a lot more than
that. And you know, that was the
payment gateway component is howwe started as our company.
But you know, as global financial infrastructure and
(38:08):
software for financial services,I think we're, we're on a, a
path of really impacting the communities and, and merchants
around the world. As I think we have the having
this conversation today, I thinkeven for some of my audience in
the US would be surprised that there's Stripe POS running
around in Asia in different parts of the world.
So my traditional closing question, what does Greek?
(38:31):
Look like for Stripe. In the Asia Pacific and Japan
for you. For me, great.
Looks like my customers coming to me and saying, Paul, you've
helped me grow our business. We're executing on everything we
wish to do because Stripe has been a great partner for us.
At the end of the day, for all that Stripe does, a founding
(38:52):
principle of the company that's upping lights in every
conversation is that we're user first.
We build our company, we listen to our customers, we want to
support them the best way are weperfect in every aspect of what
we do know, but our customers will tell us that and we're
opening to to listen. I think, you know our CE OS do a
(39:14):
fireside for our whole company every week.
And every week we open with a customer talking to the whole of
the Stripe employee base every single week.
And one of the key questions is not just what are we doing well,
but what could we do more to help you grow your business.
And I think that is what good looks like when my customers
(39:36):
tell me, Paul, you've delivered on that, on that promise and and
we love working with you and your team.
And I'll look forward to that. So, Paul, Many thanks for coming
on the show. And of course, we have two very
quick questions. First of all, on a personal
note, anything that have inspired you recently that you
want to recommend to my audience?
Well, I'm I'll go traditional and newish world.
(39:58):
OK, Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of Singapore.
And I'm reading Lee Kuan news biography.
I also am listening to a range of podcasts and I I listen to a
podcast Untapped with Vinod Cosler and that was super
interesting. And you're talking about the
Quanis. What you're talking about the
(40:18):
the two books, 1 is the Singapore story and the other
one's from the Ted world to the first.
Yeah, the Singapore story. Yes, yeah.
So of course, a happy National Day.
Of course, this podcast will be out after that, but I'm sure
we're having that one minor celebration.
So last thing, how can my audience find you?
And making sure that they know what Stripe is doing for them.
(40:39):
They can. They can find us on stripe.com.
If there's anything there, we have a contact sales form.
You can ping my team. We'll get back to you as soon as
possible, or ping Bernard and he'll put you in touch as well.
OK, I now also have a new job tohelp everybody to connect us
right there. OK, so Many thanks for everyone.
(41:00):
You can definitely find us on YouTube, Spotify and every other
channel out there. Subscribe to us on Linkedin's
news title or main site. Once again, Paul, Many thanks
for coming on the show. Thanks, Bernard.
Great to be here.
APAC represents 40% of global GDP.
So you can see that there's hugeopportunity in a very, very
diverse region. The needs of Japan are different
to the needs of China. India is exploding with SAS
software, AI, Australia, one of our larger markets, again, very
different. Southeast Asia The complexities
(00:21):
of Asia make it a joy to work in.
Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to
dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media
in Asia. I'm Bernard Liu, and today we're
going to explore how the Internet economy is driving
Asia's next wave of innovation. With me today is Paul Haropin,
(00:43):
chief revenue Officer for Asia Pacific and Japan at Strike.
We'll dive into how STRIKE is shaping the future of digital
e-commerce through AI and stablecoins and what this means for
businesses and consumers in the region.
So, Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you, Bernard.
It's great to be here. OK, so I've done some work to
look at your background and I want to start always as your
(01:05):
first time guest on my show. We'll look at your origin story.
Tell me, how do you start your career in technology?
Well, back in Sydney I finished Sydney University.
I did a economics degree and back then you had all the
employers come to campus and I thought I'd probably work in
finance industry. I wasn't 100% sure, but I wanted
(01:28):
to make sure I filled my time ofinterview so I could practice.
So I put all the banks down, themerchant banks, etcetera.
I even, I even did an interview with the Australian Federal
Police for an undercover role, just out of interest, but I
added IBM to the list back when I finished high school.
There were no computers in high school and even when I joined
(01:49):
IBM, it was only mainframes, no PCs.
But the IBM guy did an interviewwhere a very important thing of
discovery for anyone in sales, where he didn't tell me all
about IBM. He actually asked me about what
I wanted to do. And I always wanted to travel,
(02:11):
coming from my father was a refugee from World War 2 into
Australia. We didn't have a lot of money,
so we didn't have holidays, we didn't travel.
And I, my grandmother, though, gave me this view of the world
and I always wanted to travel and potentially be a diplomat.
And he just said, if you join IBM, we'll train you.
(02:32):
We have officers all around the world and have the opportunity
to travel. And so I did the second
interview, the third interview ended up joining IBM and I
worked out after six years that big company environment wasn't
really for me. And I joined a startup and I
just did startups Ever since I realized building the tech
companies and helping Silicon Valley startups expand into
(02:55):
Asia, that was where my passion lay.
And so I just, I've done that now for many, many decades.
Well, you have held leadership roles across major tech
companies VM, Ware, VCE and DOMObefore joining Strike.
What inspired you to make the leap from enterprise software to
non financial infrastructure? So for me, it often comes down
(03:20):
to two things. One is the people and two is the
opportunity and what's there. And I, I'm always wanting to
learn. That's a great thing about
startups. You're always learning.
So I was actually interviewing with another company to run
their Asia business. And my good friend who I also
worked with at VM Ware would have been my boss again.
(03:44):
And so I was doing the interviewall the way up through the
global CEO. And he said to me as we
finished, he said, hey, would you be a reference?
I said, sure, who for? He said, for me, I'm into what
do you mean? I'm coming to join you.
He said, well, I'm interviewing to be CRO for Stripe.
And during the interview with our CEO, Stripe CEOI said, hey,
(04:09):
who runs Asia for Stripe? And he said, well, funny you
asked, there is nobody at the moment we need someone.
And thus I talked myself into a role and MM Clayville, who's
very well known in the tech industry, joined the CRO and I
joined three weeks later, and that was almost five years ago.
Wow, that's interesting story. So I know Mike when he was in
(04:31):
AWS, yeah, and he was the CEO and when I had that conversation
when he was still the CRO and then we were talking a lot about
Stripe. But before we get into the main
subject of day, I want to ask you, looking back at your career
journey across Stripe and going through startups, big tech, what
are the key lessons you can share with my audience about
(04:53):
your career journey? I think what's important to me
is the people is everything, regardless of what your product
is, your service, it's the people you surround yourself and
with. And I think I've had a very high
quality bar across my whole career and I've been very lucky
(05:15):
to work for some amazing companies like, you know, Tivoli
in the early in the early 90s, mid 90s to VM Ware and now
Stripe and some others as well. And it's the quality of people
that resonates more than most. And it's really hard to get into
Stripe. We hold a really high quality
bar, which I love. So from the youngest employee
(05:38):
to, you know, the old people like me and maybe I slipped
through the gaps, but everyone is high quality, everyone is
passionate and it's just a joy to come to work.
Then it's really about making sure that you put everything in
to what you do as a start up because if you don't, you'll
never be as successful as you could do.
(05:59):
I was looking back on this with someone the other day in the
discussion on a CEOA paid CEO versus a founder CEO.
And I think where I've been ableto be successful is whilst I'm
not the founder of this company or VM Ware or anything, I've
come in relatively early and I run with a founder mindset.
(06:24):
I treat it like it is my companyand I did start it.
And I think that's the difference because I, I would
recommend to people that even inthis sort of role, you drive to
do the best thing for the company, not the best thing
always for yourself. And sometimes there's that bit
of conflict, but people and passion really is a summary.
(06:45):
There's a great lesson here because I think people
undervalues loyalty to the organization, doing for the
organization beyond yourself. I think there's a great lesson.
So I'm going to get to the mains.
Of the day. Where we talk about strike AI,
I'm more. Comfortable talking about
strike. OK.
So may let me set the stage withStripe.
Stripe is synonymous with seamless, frictionless and safe
(07:09):
payments. OK, many businesses including
myself and all forms of shapes all, all using Stripe for
payments, but the company has already evolved beyond that.
So maybe to help my audience to baseline, can you provide a high
level view of Stripes mission and its role in enabling the
Internet economy across the Asia?
(07:29):
Yeah. Our goal really is to drive and
increase the GDP of the Internetby building programmable
financial services and financialinfrastructure that enables
merchants of any size from the smallest start up to the largest
global multibillion dollar corporation to be able to do
(07:50):
business in any country in the world.
And to do business not just simply in taking payments, but
being able to engage in all the surrounding capability of that
money movement across the globe.We have a suite of software, SAS
software we call our revenue andfinancial automation suite,
(08:10):
which is becoming really even more relevant with the advent of
AI and usage based billing, SAS type billing, subscription
billing, the invoicing around that you need to charge, collect
and file taxes. We do that in over 100
countries, bank reconciliation in store terminals and much
(08:30):
more. So we're really payments is, is
the foundation of the company. But that financial
infrastructure, we've built a whole surrounding capability of
software services and hardware that really delivers really
strong outcomes for customers through a very strong API driven
platform. So I have always go to different
(08:52):
restaurants. Sometimes I actually even seen
the Stripes POS systems. Are we in place?
So Asia is probably 1 of Stripesfastest growing regions, very
similar to a lot of other tech businesses.
What's driving this growth and are there any unique challenges
and opportunities that Asia present as compared to all the
other markets out there? All of the above, Bernard, when
(09:16):
we say we're trying to grow the GDP of the Internet, a stat from
last year is the strike process,$1.4 trillion in global revenue.
That represents 1.3% of global GDP.
APEC represents 40% of global GDP.
So you can see that there's hugeopportunity in a very, very
(09:38):
diverse region. And the needs of Japan are
different to the needs of China.India is exploding with SAS
software, AI, Australia, one of our larger markets, again very
different. And so Southeast Asia, the
complexities of Asia make it a joy to to work in.
I think you see in Southeast Asia, one of the opportunities
(10:01):
is Southeast Asia. India is it's a world leader in
local payment methods, wallets, real time payment capability.
It's it's really leading and notjust for itself actually in
influencing what happens in the rest of the world.
You see Brazil now has peaks, well peaks like UPI in India is
(10:23):
effectively A partnership they've taken, they've worked
together to deliver this real time network.
Japan is really exciting becauseit's still very much a cash
driven society, very high in store retail and coming through
with a platform economy which iswhere we're very strong across
the rest of Asia and the rest ofthe world.
(10:44):
You mentioned the fact that you go into a restaurant and see a
Stripe terminal. All of that is driven by a
platform partner that is delivering services to that cafe
or to that restaurant and Stripeenables all the financial
component of their SAS offering and platform offering into that
market. So the opportunity here is
(11:05):
tremendous where we're looking at some of our banking as a
service product, Stride Capital for lending card issuing, many
of our customers are using that and we're bringing bringing that
here to Asia. So I think the challenges are is
it is sort of an inverse of thatis, is it is a complex region.
Every country is different. Every country has their own
(11:28):
regulatory framework. Recently you see the Reserve
Bank in Australia has spoken about banning surcharging, while
many other countries don't have surcharging.
Countries like India, Thailand, their reserve banks and
governments are trying to uplifttheir community.
And how do you do that via digital payments?
(11:48):
Because that's really changes the world for a lot of people
who are less fortunate. They're unbanked or underbanked,
they can't get credit, they don't have a bank account, but
with a phone base wallet, they can actually partake in digital
transactions. And so we're just very proud to
to be supporting a lot of these communities and merchants who
(12:09):
grow their business, not just locally, but globally.
A lot of our business, particularly here in APEC
traverses the rest of the world.The ability to start a company
in Singapore and within a week be processing with customers in
40 countries around the world. If you wish to simply by, you
know clicking a few buttons in the Stripe dashboard is
(12:31):
fantastic and we see customers take advantage of that all the
time. I actually like the experience.
I always enjoy looking at my Stripe dashboard, so I want to
come to talking about about one of the most biggest topic is
about AI and Njentic AI for Internet commerce.
I think without doubt AI in the last three years has been the
most hot topic and I think Stripe has actually integrated a
(12:53):
lot into its products. Let's talk about what this means
for businesses. How is AI actually transforming
the way how businesses are managing, say, payments and
fraud prevention today? Yeah, I think on the AI topic,
we're very early in the cycle. You know, I think it's, it's
like we've discovered fire and we're trying to workout.
(13:15):
Well, this is interesting, but what do we do with it?
And it's moving so fast that youcan have a conversation with
someone and three weeks later. So things have changed and the
AI companies are moving really fast, whether they're Silicon
Valley based AI, China based AI companies, India that I think is
the triumvirate of where the majority of AI companies will
(13:36):
will come from. Just the momentum in those three
countries is quite phenomenal. The way Stripe has approached
this, our foundation is a company of self-service.
So a merchant like yourself, Bernard, you probably logged on
to Stripe, set up your own account and now you were
processing and taking payments without the involvement of
(13:56):
anyone else. And because we can do that, an
AI agent is really just another self-serve customer.
And so we have foundationally built our company without
knowing it for the future of AI and agentic commerce.
In addition to that, we've builtand continued to iterate and
(14:17):
build really fast agentic commerce toolkits.
They're being downloaded, you know, thousands of times a week
from merchants who are starting to build in the capability of
agentic into their platform. Now again, as I said, still
early days, you'll see some capability out there.
There's simple things like most checkouts of a website are built
(14:38):
for humans. They're not built for AI.
And so the AI agent can check you out, but it actually has to
fill in the fields like you would as a human.
Now we're helping change that, but that requires a change on
the on the e-commerce side, not just the stripe side.
And so that evolution is happening at at scale.
(14:59):
On the fraud side, we built our,our fraud management software
using AI and machine learning, you know, years ago.
So it's built on that framework and we continue to iterate on
its capability as AI increases. We, we're using AI internally at
Stripe across a whole range of vectors from managing fraud to
(15:21):
making sure that a customer using Stripe can have their
customer check out and be presented with the right payment
method at the right time. For example, and if you're
buying a, a couch, you may be presented with a buy now pay
later option automatically because AI sees that that is the
biggest converting option for that type of purchase.
(15:44):
If you're, you know, buying a $30 T-shirt, it could be a
credit card that's put up or a, you know, a shoppy pay wallet or
something like this. So I think for us, there's two
aspects. How do we leverage AI and
continue to build AI into all ofour software and infrastructure
so that we're producing better performance, better results,
(16:07):
better fraud management, better conversion experience for our
customers. And then how do we enable
agentic commerce for our customers, particularly the AI
companies and retail merchants so that that the process can
happen rapidly without, without them having to worry about the
insurance and outs of how all the payment flows work.
(16:29):
We just provide the infrastructure that allows them
to execute on their business model of AI that they wish to,
and everyone will do it slightlydifferently.
I think it's interesting, you brought up a very interesting
example which I didn't thought about.
Like say these days people go toa church GBT and they look for
different products in e-commercesite.
And then of course the question is whether church GBT is going
(16:51):
to put a buy button there. And if there's a buy button, the
agent needs to interact directlywith the payment system.
And I thought that when you use the example of how the agent,
the agentic AI fill the forms for the fields and then get the
credit card and then do the payment transaction, it is
interesting because now you're giving the agentic AI some form
(17:12):
of some degree of autonomy, I guess.
How would you define agentic AI and it's importance for strike
to actually facilitate that agent AI flow in the bigger
process right? I mean fraud detection is 1
aspect, the other Of course there are other aspects where
the AI actually helps with all the other parts of strikes
businesses. Yeah, I think it's, it's
(17:33):
critical for us. I mean, we have such a deep
focus on this like nothing I've ever seen before.
A partly because we see the potential as being world
changing. I also think that it's
everything is moving really quick.
So this is not a time to be sitting back thinking about
what's going on because it's happening as as we go.
(17:55):
And so there's an opportunity for us as a very fast moving
innovative company to to jump into that.
The example that we were talkingabout there is as your AI agent
or interface will now not only show you, you know, the best
glassware that you're looking tobuy and all the options, but
(18:17):
will allow you to purchase. You give them your credit card.
They are then able to use Stripes issuing virtual card
capability to then create multiple virtual cards just for
the amounts that are being transacted, execute on those and
then they're disposed of. And so your card is securely on
file with the AI agent tokenizedby Stripe, but they issue
(18:41):
virtual cards off the back of that.
So your card is not going to allof these retailers, it's a
virtual card that's going through.
So building that flow with the capability.
So it's, it all happens seamlessly.
In addition, just to the, the normal continuing checkout
capability where we optimize everything about the conversion
(19:03):
ratio so that as any human or agent hit the checkout, the
experience is optimal to convertas quickly as possible.
We have a, we have a wallet called Stripe Link.
It enables you to check out within 6 seconds.
You can use it, you know, to payfor your Uber in America or book
your Airbnb. And that opportunity now is
(19:26):
benefits the merchant because when you want to buy and you
have the excitement to purchase,nothing gets in your way because
we know 50% of people abandoned a car purchase when it's too
frictionful. You get a, you check out, you
get a code, you hit the code andyou're done.
And so that's where all the innovation is happening for us,
as well as a lot of the internalwork on fraud, optimizing our
(19:50):
own engineering teams and leveraging products so that we
can develop faster, more products faster with even high
quality. Interesting.
I was just reminded of the fact that I was using Stripe link to
actually pay my production team direct.
Fantastic, using my thank you. You should be a reference.
Call 6 seconds is pretty good. So I think 11 interesting thing
(20:12):
that you brought up during this whole flow conversation is that
there is also some differentiation in terms of
stripes approach, right? Because it's no no longer just
being a traditional automation or just have a direct
transaction, but or even rule based.
Now it seems to me that Strat will be able to do adaptive type
of payment flows as compared to the past.
(20:33):
Am I right? To you are in many ways a good
example of that is we call adaptive pricing, which is the
ability for a consumer to check out and maybe it's a
cross-border transaction. I'll use the example of, you
know, we're here in Singapore. Maybe I want to book a hotel in
Thailand. It presents Thai baht costs.
(20:55):
I don't know what that means in Singapore dollars.
And now I have to get a calculator and FX and try and
work it out or it gives me a sort of a SGD number, but it's
not really SGDI end up paying inbaht.
What adaptive pricing does is able to see where you are and
present you with those prices. And if I'm here in Singapore, I
(21:15):
can check out with a Singapore price on my Singapore credit
card and I'm charged Singapore dollars, but the merchant gets
the Thai baht that was there. And so we manage that process
for them. So it's very, again very
seamless and just simple things like that, which looks simple,
but a very complex to build result.
(21:35):
On average so far in 18% increase in execution of a
transaction and 18% increase in business for anybody is a big
increase in revenue. So they're the sorts of things
we're very proud of and that that's just one example of the
many innovations. Any other more exciting AI power
capabilities that strike maybe building for businesses and
(21:58):
changes how businesses and smallbusinesses or even large
enterprises? I think there will be and we'll
talk to a few of those companiesat our striped tour event coming
up. And so maybe you can put those
links in your. Podcast.
Afterwards, I can't talk about them just now, but definitely
over the next couple of weeks we'll OK, we'll see some of
those be announced. I'll be back get you a.
(22:19):
Of the short talk about happy tohappy, OK.
So what's the one thing you knowabout the application of AI in
commerce that very few people dofrom strips perspective?
Good question. I think it's really the speed
of, of how organizations are trying to work through the
(22:40):
complexities of these transactions because there's
many, there's many things that go into financial services.
People often think that, hey, I go onto a website and they give
them my credit card. And that's really simple.
Well, there's a world of complexity of regulations,
government controls, money laundering management, credit
risks, all the fraud risks that go on with people trying to do
(23:03):
things. And I think a lot of people
don't understand the underlying complexities.
It's sort of akin to the traditional iceberg picture
where you see that bit of iceberg sitting out of the
water, but underneath there's somuch.
And that's how we've we've founda strike was really to take away
and obfuscate all of that complexity of the global
(23:27):
financial system so that merchants and software companies
and platforms can really focus on what's important to them,
which is their business, not have to worry about the
complexity of this system. Because if you imagine going
back 20 years, even sooner, actually setting up a global
organization in multiple countries was highly expensive.
(23:50):
You had to have companies and structures and banking
relationships and everything in those countries.
It's what slowed global commerce.
And you can see now that with Stripe, Stripe customers last
year grew 38% over the Fortune 500, which grew about 5%.
(24:13):
Well, and so the growth leverageof using Stripe and it's ability
to scale really quickly is trulydelivering on our promise which
is to increase the GDP of the Internet.
So I want to talk about stable coins which some people say is
the charger became moment of crypto.
I've been a great user of stablecoins over the years being a
(24:34):
crypto person. So I think 1 interesting thing
that happened last year was the acquisition of Bridge, yeah,
which I think was probably 1 of I think Stripes most interesting
acquisition. But we're not going to talk
about that. We're going to talk about how
Stripe has started to integrate stable coins into his payments
stack and I want to unhack that.So maybe to start, why did
(24:56):
Stripe has now decide to supportstable coin transactions now?
And what problem are you trying to solve for the customers?
I think to really appreciate this is as probably some of the
US audience may not think about how difficult payments are done
in our part of the world. Yeah.
And stable coin seems to be a very emerging markets kind of
(25:17):
phenomenon. Maybe you can talk about that.
Yeah, I think it was an excitingmove, us really diving deeply
into stablecoin and we've since brought another company called
Privy which has more wallet, crypto wallet based
infrastructure. But just to focus on stablecoin
as a whole, I think we can simplify a couple of things.
(25:38):
Our region, Latin America, a number of other regions.
Currencies can fluctuate. Money movement can be difficult.
The old World financial system is inherently hundreds of years
old and you know, we're using systems like SWIFT to send
money. You know, you fill in forms and
(25:59):
and file that and the money, themoney turns up three days later.
I think what stablecoin enables is 1.
The as it's name suggests, the security and stability of the
currency in an initial case it'sa USDCUS dollar pegged
(26:19):
stablecoin. So a company, for example, that
we have like Star Link that may wish to transact in Argentina
where the currencies fluctuate dramatically.
They can use stablecoin for the transaction and now they know
it's stable significantly. They can also move that money
(26:40):
rapidly using the stablecoin infrastructure.
In fact, one of our team was in Bolivia the other day and the
duty free at the airport in Bolivia only accepted stablecoin
of which is amazing. And then the ability now there's
companies that have wallets. We've announced a deal with Visa
where merchants can also create Visa cards that you pay, you can
(27:03):
pay in store off the back of a stablecoin.
I also had a a Japanese customerI met a little while ago whose
business is sending second hand cars to Africa, the Caribbean
and many such countries. And his biggest, his biggest
business problem was the fact that his customers say in
(27:23):
Zimbabwe would have to come to the office carrying bags of U.S.
dollars cash and pay security guards with machine guns.
And then the secondary problem is he's now got bags of cash
that he needs to send back to Japan.
And so the stable coin will, I think, rapidly disrupt the way
money moves around the world. The other side of this,
(27:46):
interestingly we're seeing a lotof interest and have done some
business already with large global corporations that have
offices around the world and very mature treasury departments
within their corporations actually looking to use
stablecoin to manage how their treasury floats around the
world. And so they're two initial use
(28:08):
cases that we think really mean that this disruption will flow
through. We're still on an early phase,
but if you look at bridges growth compared to Stripes early
growth, as Patrick talked about at our conference in May, it's
growing at a super fast rate, faster than Stripe did.
So we're really excited about the interest we're seeing in
(28:28):
stable coin, particularly in ourin our region here in APEC.
So Crossword Tree is now probably one of the massive
pinpoint for businesses in Asia.I think people do maybe not
appreciate this, but how can stable crimes make global
commerce more efficient and costeffective?
I think you brought out a very good point about some countries
with very volatile currency exchange rates that there's one
(28:50):
use the others to fight against inflation.
Are there any kind of how are there ways that stable currency
can become very impactful to thecommerce?
I think you'll start to see alsothat it floats down to the
consumer level. So we talked about, you know,
the volatility area, we talked about large corporations
managing treasury and float and being able to move stable coin.
(29:13):
And you'll see a growth of stable coin around the world.
You'll see that many countries are now exploring what this
means for them. I don't think any country can
divorce itself from the need of a digital currency.
And so again, we're early days in this, but I think you'll see
also consumers start to adopt stablecoin, particularly where
(29:35):
they might be travelling around the world, just want stability.
And so wallets that are backed by stablecoin with a, with a
credit card or debit card at the, at the front end is another
area that you'll start to see along with other encompassing
other crypto options as well. I think the challenge of crypto
(29:55):
with companies is it's volatility.
And the whole idea of stablecoinis to say, well, this stablecoin
is USDC. It's volatility is only matched
by the currency itself. And so I know if I grab my
currency in this country, immediately convert to
stablecoin, I now have a stable,a stable float to manage my
(30:15):
business with. So, so one thing that comes out
a lot is the, some regulators are still cautious about digital
assets. I, I think it's different
countries, right? So for example, now US have the
Genius Act and I think Singapore, Japan and some of the
more mature Asia PAC countries have very clear stable coin
(30:36):
regulation, but maybe some othercountries don't.
So how to strike? Think about, say, navigating,
say, compliance and. Trust while also.
Innovating and sort of bringing stable coin technology across
the region itself. Yeah, we think about it front of
mind. You know, we have a real focus
on being guardians of a financial ecosystem.
(30:56):
We have teams here in Singapore and Europe and America of people
that work very closely with the government.
I meet also regularly with MAS here in Singapore, Reserve Bank
in Australia. And you know, our, our role is
not to tell anyone what to do, but our role is to help educate
and show what's happening in themarket, provide some guidance
(31:18):
and support. We obviously have an opinion on
these things. But our role, whether it's
stablecoin or anything else, ourjob is to really help educate
and work with our regulators to get the best results for the
country and for the merchants sort of processing and building
their businesses there. I think with digital currencies,
(31:38):
again, when you have something that's disruptive, it's totally
different to the normal way of doing things that we've been
used to for hundreds of years. Governments and regulators quite
rightly, will take their time, try and understand what's
happening. Some will move faster than
others, others will be followersand that's that's all OK Stripe
(31:59):
will be supportive of of all of those countries so that we can
help help them with the decisions that they're making
and provide a global perspectiveas well.
So do you see stable coins as a complement to traditional
banking rules? Or it could be.
A complete disruption over the next decade, I mean not in the
perspective of being replacement, but just looking at
(32:22):
it from this current juncture and an extrapolate forward.
Yeah, I think, I think things will operate in tandem for a
while. And then based on adoption, the
disruption will happen faster oror slower than what we think.
You can never quite bet on thesethings, but just the speed of
the reliability and technological advancement that
(32:45):
stablecoin infrastructure bringsto the market, I think you'll
see it disrupt the whole range of money movement options.
You've seen it already even withsome traditional providers
making some some impacts. But stablecoin I think will
change the way people think about treasury management across
the globe. And I think for the better.
(33:08):
I think for the better. So I think now we should zoom
back out coming back to Asia as a dynamic region for both AI and
financial technology adoption. So I think now from your
perspective today, what makes Asia Pacific now a photo ground
for say AI driven commerce and digital payments?
I just think it's the, it's the pace and energy of the economies
(33:29):
here in AIPAC, as I mentioned earlier, we represent 40% of the
global GDP. You go to countries that are
moving so fast, be it Indonesia,India, China, Oh my God, I've
been in China and the energy andpace of invention is phenomenal.
(33:50):
Whether it's AI or it's self driving cars or robotics or you
know, passenger drones, all of these things are happening so
fast. So I think Asia is 1 a very fast
growing digitised economy. I think the fastest digitising
economy for payments in the world.
(34:10):
The speed of adoption is tremendously fast.
I believe we did around 10 billion transactions on UPI in
India, 10 billion transactions. That's forecast to be 100
billion by 2030 and probably will happen sooner.
And that's just one example of of the adoption here in
(34:31):
Singapore. Obviously we have Pay Now in
Australia, real time payments with Pay 2.
It's just so innovative here andso much energy as a region that
we can't not but ride this wave of AI and all the things that it
brings to us for our businesses,for our technology, for our
lives. Asia, there's there's no better
(34:52):
place to be living and working. My view anyway.
So how, how do you think say cultural or even regulatory
differences across the region ship how Stripe is going to
strategy in terms of rolling outall these things like AI or
stable coin technologies to the businesses and maybe to even the
(35:12):
individual consumers out there? Yeah.
Well, we really follow the regulators.
So, you know, our goal is to bring innovation to market,
obviously to do that in a very compliant way.
And so we're encouraging engagement on these areas.
We're seeing, we're working witha many of our AI customer
(35:34):
partners as well in terms of what they're doing and how
they're engaging with government.
Because obviously you can't turnon the news without people
talking about do we regulate AI?Do we not regulate how fast
should we do it? My view on this is everything
should have some guardrails around it.
By the time any government regulates AI today, it will have
(35:57):
changed so much, the regulationswill be almost irrelevant.
So being able to support governments in how they look at
these things, make them aware ofwhat's happening, what's
possible, how fast things are moving.
I think you start to put guardrails in place.
But it's, you know, as I, as I said at the beginning, we found
fire and you just can't regulatefire without really knowing what
(36:21):
it's doing. But the process and the
intellectual discussion and thought around the impacts of
AII think are very important for, you know, for every
community to discuss whether it's it's commerce base or it
has, you know, more social construct impacts that we need
to consider. So what's the one question that
you wish more people would ask you about?
(36:43):
Strike, But they don't. That's a really good question,
Bernard. What would you wonder?
What would you want them to say?Ask you?
I would love them to ask me. How can you help us do more with
the infrastructure that you've built?
Some will. Follow with that question, how
would you help me as a business such that you know Stripe can
(37:03):
help me to scale my business? Well, the things that we would
talk about Bernard, is, you know, what's your what's your
community that's purchasing fromyou?
Are they purchasing one off things?
Could you build a subscription model with them where they they
pay by what they're using? Which countries are you in?
Can we help make sure that when someone wishes to buy, buy
(37:25):
something from you in another country that they can buy in
their own local currency? So it's a seamless transaction.
They're all of the things that we'd have conversations around.
The stripe has built such a comprehensive platform and
infrastructure that there's manydiscussions to have.
And and the one thing that really always drives me crazy,
(37:47):
if someone says, hey, Stripes a payment gateway, yes, we are.
But that's like, you know, saying Amazon sells books.
Yes, they do. They also do a lot more than
that. And you know, that was the
payment gateway component is howwe started as our company.
But you know, as global financial infrastructure and
(38:08):
software for financial services,I think we're, we're on a, a
path of really impacting the communities and, and merchants
around the world. As I think we have the having
this conversation today, I thinkeven for some of my audience in
the US would be surprised that there's Stripe POS running
around in Asia in different parts of the world.
So my traditional closing question, what does Greek?
(38:31):
Look like for Stripe. In the Asia Pacific and Japan
for you. For me, great.
Looks like my customers coming to me and saying, Paul, you've
helped me grow our business. We're executing on everything we
wish to do because Stripe has been a great partner for us.
At the end of the day, for all that Stripe does, a founding
(38:52):
principle of the company that's upping lights in every
conversation is that we're user first.
We build our company, we listen to our customers, we want to
support them the best way are weperfect in every aspect of what
we do know, but our customers will tell us that and we're
opening to to listen. I think, you know our CE OS do a
(39:14):
fireside for our whole company every week.
And every week we open with a customer talking to the whole of
the Stripe employee base every single week.
And one of the key questions is not just what are we doing well,
but what could we do more to help you grow your business.
And I think that is what good looks like when my customers
(39:36):
tell me, Paul, you've delivered on that, on that promise and and
we love working with you and your team.
And I'll look forward to that. So, Paul, Many thanks for coming
on the show. And of course, we have two very
quick questions. First of all, on a personal
note, anything that have inspired you recently that you
want to recommend to my audience?
Well, I'm I'll go traditional and newish world.
(39:58):
OK, Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of Singapore.
And I'm reading Lee Kuan news biography.
I also am listening to a range of podcasts and I I listen to a
podcast Untapped with Vinod Cosler and that was super
interesting. And you're talking about the
Quanis. What you're talking about the
(40:18):
the two books, 1 is the Singapore story and the other
one's from the Ted world to the first.
Yeah, the Singapore story. Yes, yeah.
So of course, a happy National Day.
Of course, this podcast will be out after that, but I'm sure
we're having that one minor celebration.
So last thing, how can my audience find you?
And making sure that they know what Stripe is doing for them.
(40:39):
They can. They can find us on stripe.com.
If there's anything there, we have a contact sales form.
You can ping my team. We'll get back to you as soon as
possible, or ping Bernard and he'll put you in touch as well.
OK, I now also have a new job tohelp everybody to connect us
right there. OK, so Many thanks for everyone.
(41:00):
You can definitely find us on YouTube, Spotify and every other
channel out there. Subscribe to us on Linkedin's
news title or main site. Once again, Paul, Many thanks
for coming on the show. Thanks, Bernard.
Great to be here.
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