ChatGPT may still be going through its growing pains, but Stripe sees a future in the emerging language recognition technology as a means to simplify complex payment systems.
"There's a lot of products across Stripe," said Emily Sands, head of information at Stripe, where she helps lead data science, machine learning and corporate technology. "This can provide developers with a really straightforward summary of what's going on with their business and how they can use new products and tech."
Stripe is embracing ChatGPT as the financial services industry figures out what to do with the technology, which is immature but can potentially revolutionize tasks such as customer service, sales, risk and back offices by making digital communication faster and easier to understand.
"Let's say a merchant wants to know what payment methods are supported by one of our products," Sands said. "You can type that query in and it will spit out the answer in plain English."
OpenAI, a research lab that has backing from Microsoft, developed ChatGPT and will work with Stripe to commercialize the technology. Formally known as Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, it generally refers to a more advanced and granular form of natural language technology. OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, and the innovation has drawn a lot of attention. Alan Alda and Mike Farrell, for example, recently read a
At ChatGPT's current rate of growth it will reach more than 500 million users by the end of the year, which will provide a massive base for Stripe to expand its role as a payment facilitator, according to Richard Crone, a payments consultant. A payments facilitator provides access to different payment options on behalf of merchant clients.
"There's a huge value for Stripe in being a payment facilitator for an exponentially growing platform that requires the user to register," Crone said.
OpenAI will monetize ChatGPT Plus — a premium version of ChatGPT that will cost $20 per month for a subscription — using Stripe's billing and checkout products to power subscription payments and checkout pages for users. Open AI will additionally use Link, Stripe's one-click checkout product, to autofill payment information; and Stripe's tax product, which will aid OpenAI's moves into new markets.
Stripe has also been part of the GPT-4 beta, enabling developers to pose natural-language queries in Stripe Docs. The technology answers queries by summarizing the relevant parts of the documentation or extracting certain pieces of information.
"AI and machine learning aren't new to us. We've used that tech for a while now," Sands said. "But the idea behind ChatGPT is to create smart documents, to make the communication much easier."
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"The technology is not really developed yet," said Alenka Grealish, lead researcher on emerging technology at Celent. "Right now most companies that are working with it are stress testing it. Some are playing with it to spot use cases. But it's still very early days."
There have been some concerns about
"AI is a toddler right now, and when it grows up and moves into adulthood, we're all going to be spending a lot of time with it," said John Shahawy, founder of Moonbeam, a startup that sells an AI-based writing assistant.
Moonbeam, which was founded in 2022, helps users compose essays, articles, blog posts and other long-form content. Teachers and professors use Moonbeam to help craft lesson plans.
The startup uses Stripe to manage subscriptions, one-time payments, cancellations, billing and other services. Shahawy anticipates ChatGPT, accessible via Stripe, will enable the startup to expand its own range of writing tools while streamlining business documentation.
"It isn't just going to change the nature of 'my' business or even just writing," Shahawy said. "It is going to be in every app. It will soon be table stakes to have AI, whether it's generative or just something that makes processes like customer service more efficient."
ChatGPT's growth, and the attention it attracts, comes during a difficult time for the technology industry. Stripe announced its ChatGPT deal at nearly the same time it announced a new $6.5 billion funding round that reduces the company's valuation to $50 billion. That's almost a 50% decline from its $95 billion valuation in March 2021. Stripe did not provide comment on this new funding round, but the company has publicly positioned the new capital as a way to provide liquidity to current and former employees and to address tax obligations. The company also said it expects to turn a profit this year.
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Adding chatGPT may make these new tools more accessible for merchants.
"ChatGPT makes it far easier to install Stripe's software development kit," Crone said.
