The AWS of the Financial World: Why It Becomes the Biggest Winner in the Era of AI + Stablecoins

Author: Yokiiiya Stablehunter

The most important thing Stripe has done is turn money into a piece of callable code.

A few years ago, when I was working on overseas products, the payment solution I used was Stripe. At that time in Silicon Valley, it was almost a "default option"—any company making tech products, SaaS, or developer tools would ultimately connect their payments to Stripe. It never felt to me like just a payment tool, but rather an API company that is extremely friendly to developers: clear documentation, very low integration costs, and all complex financial processes abstracted into a few lines of code.

You almost don't need to understand how the underlying banking system, global acquiring, and clearing and settlement work to get a company started with receiving money. But at that time, I didn't realize that behind this "default option" was a company rewriting the global money flow.

Looking back, the significance of this is actually very large—what Stripe has done is never just about "better payment experiences," but rather: turning the financial system into a part of the internet.

Last year, when I truly entered Web3 to work on PayFi, starting to run the funding paths of stablecoins and examining the global on/off ramp structure, I frequently saw Stripe's name again. But this time, it didn't appear in comparisons of payment products, but rather in acquisition news in the crypto space. It acquired several companies spread across different segments, and while the moves were still not very high-profile, the path was very clear.

At that moment, I realized one thing: Stripe may never have left the competition for "next-generation financial infrastructure." It was from that time that I wanted to write an article about Stripe.

In the entire tech industry, Stripe is a very special existence. A company valued at over $100 billion, founded fifteen years ago, has experienced the complete cycle of the internet, yet has never gone public. If it were just about liquidity, this could have been accomplished long ago. But it hasn't. This means one thing—it's waiting for a bigger moment.

Stripe's issue has never been "can it go public," but rather: what identity does it hope to go public with? As a payment company? A financial services company? Or, the financial infrastructure of the internet? It was also through re-understanding Stripe that I slowly realized one thing: over the past 15 years, the main theme of the payment industry has actually been two things: lowering fees and increasing conversion rates.

But while everyone else was still optimizing "how to collect money," Stripe was doing something else—turning money into a piece of callable code. This is also why, when AI starts to create companies, complete transactions, and earn income on its own, most payment companies face issues of system incompatibility, while Stripe faces—an explosion of demand.

Many people see Stripe as a payment company. Just as many early on viewed AWS as "selling servers." But if we look at it from another perspective:

• AWS is not about cloud computing; it is about the computing infrastructure of the internet.

• Stripe is also not about payments. It is building the financial operating system of the internet.

  

In this round of paradigm shift with both AI and stablecoins arriving, this type of "infrastructure company" begins to show true time compounding. As stablecoins become the new settlement layer, and AI becomes the new business entity, the financial system is undergoing a fundamental rewrite. The question is no longer: whose payment is cheaper? But rather: who can become the default Money API called upon by the new economic entities.

From this perspective, all of Stripe's past 15 years of "seemingly restrained" choices—avoiding exchanges, not creating consumer wallets, not chasing the crypto bull market narrative—suddenly point to the same result: it is becoming the default financial foundation of the AI + stablecoin era. As AI begins to become a new business entity, and stablecoins start to become the new settlement layer, all of Stripe's paths over the past fifteen years begin to point to the same answer.

1. From Payments API to Financial OS: Stripe's Three Leaps

If we continue to understand Stripe as a "payment company," we will not be able to comprehend all of its seemingly "too restrained" choices over the past 15 years. The problem Stripe has been solving since day one is not "how to collect money," but rather: how to enable an internet company to complete global capital flows without understanding the financial system. The difference between these two determines all of its subsequent paths.

First Stage: Payments API ------ The Internet Native Payment.

In its earliest days, Stripe seemed to have just done one better thing: providing an online payment interface that is easier to integrate than traditional acquiring institutions. But what it really changed was not the payment experience, but the way payments are integrated. Before Stripe appeared, enabling acquiring meant:

• Opening a bank account

• Signing contracts offline

• A long technical integration cycle

Stripe turned all of this into: a few lines of code, integration completed in minutes, making payments a native capability of the internet for the first time. This is also why it became the "default option" for tech companies in Silicon Valley—it is not just a better tool, but rather: a financial standard component of the developer era.

Second Stage: Financial Infrastructure ------ API-ifying the Financial Backend of Companies.

If Stripe had remained at the Payments API stage, it would be a very successful payment company today. But starting with Atlas, Connect, Issuing, and Treasury, it entered the second stage. It was no longer just helping companies collect money, but began building: the financial infrastructure of companies. Through Stripe, a company can: register entities, open accounts, issue cards, manage funds, and complete global revenue sharing, meaning: companies no longer need to "own" a financial system but can call upon a financial system. This step is essentially the same as what AWS did: AWS made servers disappear, Stripe made financial backends disappear, and financial capabilities became composable modules for the first time.

Third Stage: Programmable Economy ------ The Money Layer Prepared for AI and Stablecoins.

When entering today's stage, Stripe's path truly reveals its ultimate direction. AI begins to become a business entity, stablecoins start to become the new settlement layer, and new economic forms are emerging:

• AI creates products

• AI collects payments

• AI shares revenue

• AI manages cash flow on its own

All of this is based on one premise: the financial system must be programmable. And this is exactly what Stripe has been doing for 15 years. This is also why, when most payment companies are still discussing how to "support crypto payments," Stripe's actions are:

• Acquiring wallet infrastructure

• Connecting on/off ramps

• Supporting stablecoin settlements

What it has always aimed to solve is not "can it accept cryptocurrencies," but rather: when money itself becomes an internet-native asset, who will become the default operating system for funds. From Payments API to Financial Infrastructure to Programmable Economy, what Stripe has completed is not just a product upgrade, but three positioning leaps.

So looking at it today, one can find that Stripe's competitors have never been traditional payment companies. At different stages, its true benchmarks have actually been:

• First Stage: Traditional acquiring institutions

• Second Stage: The banking system

• Third Stage: The economic operating system of the internet

It is precisely in the third stage, with the arrival of AI and stablecoins, that all of Stripe's paths over the past fifteen years begin to generate time compounding.

2. Why is Stripe Valued at Hundreds of Billions Yet Delayed in Going Public?

Over the past decade, Stripe has almost experienced every suitable window for going public. It has a stable revenue structure, huge transaction volume, extremely high market share, and is not lacking attention from the capital markets. If going public were just about liquidity, this could have been accomplished long ago. But it hasn't. So the real question is not: why hasn't Stripe gone public yet? But rather: what is it waiting for?

For most companies, going public is a financing action, a phase-ending point. But for infrastructure companies, going public is more like a "confirmation of form." The identity with which you enter the capital market will determine how the market understands you. If Stripe had gone public five years ago, it would have been seen as a stable growth payment company; priced based on transaction volume, fee rates, and profit margins. That would have been a very successful IPO, but also one that would "lock it in."

Because Stripe's ultimate goal has never been payments. Its true benchmark has never been PayPal or Adyen. Rather, it is: AWS. The valuation logic of infrastructure companies is never based on the current business structure, but on one thing: how much economic activity will run on this system in the future.

This is also why Stripe has done many things in the past few years that "seem not to enhance short-term revenue": Atlas, Connect, Issuing, and Treasury are not the sexiest parts of a payment company's financial model, but they accomplish something more important: they transform Stripe from a payment company into the underlying coordination layer of economic activity.

If we extend the timeline, we will find that Stripe has been doing one highly consistent thing: waiting for a moment—the structural change of the internet's business form, where the financial system must be rewritten. In the Web2 era, this moment never truly arrived. Companies were still human organizations relying on the traditional banking system for clearing and settlement, still T+N; what Stripe could do was prepare all interfaces in advance.

The emergence of AI and stablecoins has made this moment truly appear for the first time. When AI begins to become a business entity: it needs automatic payments, automatic revenue sharing, and automatic cash flow management. When stablecoins become the new settlement layer: funds begin to exist natively online, clearing and settlement become real-time, and global capital flows become API calls. The combination of these two means:

For the first time, the financial system needs to operate like the internet. From this perspective, Stripe's long-term delay in going public is not a form of conservatism. On the contrary, it is an extremely aggressive choice. Because it is betting on one thing: to write the operating system in advance before the new economic structure appears. When this structure truly emerges, it will no longer be a "stable growth payment company," but rather: the financial infrastructure that the new economic entities run on by default. It is not transforming. It has simply waited for its time.

3. Stripe's Crypto Strategy: Building a Global Settlement Layer

While many payment companies are still discussing "whether to support cryptocurrency payments," all of Stripe's actions in crypto are actually focused on one thing: the ultimate clearing rights of global funds. It has not created an exchange, issued assets, or attempted to become a traffic entry point. It has chosen a path more in line with Stripe: incorporating stablecoins into its clearing network. If we look at its acquisitions in the crypto field over the past few years on the same structural diagram, we will find that this is not a business expansion, but a completion of a set of clearing layer components.

Bridge: The Clearing Network of the Stablecoin Era. Stripe's most critical step in the crypto space was the acquisition of the stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge for approximately $1.1 billion, the largest acquisition in its history. What Bridge provides is not trading capability, but rather:

• Stablecoin issuance and orchestration

• Cross-border fund routing

• Reserve and custody management

In other words, it controls how stablecoins flow globally and ultimately complete settlements. If we compare this layer to the traditional financial system, it is closer to a combination of: clearing network + SWIFT. This means that when merchants continue to collect payments through Stripe, the underlying funds can complete global real-time clearing through stablecoins without changing the front-end experience. Merchants still see dollars arriving, but the way funds flow in between has been rewritten.

Privy: On-chain Account System. The clearing layer not only needs a fund network but must also have an account system. The problem that Stripe's acquisition of Privy solves is: how to allow users to have an on-chain account without understanding Web3. By logging in with email to generate a wallet, in-app custody, and seamless key management. This means one thing: in the future, a user, or even an AI, will have a funding account that can directly participate in stablecoin settlements as soon as they create an account in the app. This is completely consistent with what Stripe did in Web2— abstracting away the complex financial account system.

Fiat Interfaces: Connecting to the Real-World Banking System. Stripe already possesses the strongest fiat funding capabilities globally:

• Global acquiring network

• Treasury

• Issuing

• Banking system connectivity

When this system is combined with the stablecoin clearing network, it accomplishes something that traditional crypto companies find most difficult: integrating the on-chain clearing layer with the real-world banking system. For the first time, stablecoins can directly become settlement assets for merchants, rather than just on-chain assets.

Compliance Layer: The Premise of Clearing Rights. In the traditional financial system, the reason clearing systems hold power is not just because of technical capabilities, but because they are embedded within the regulatory structure. Bridge is applying for a U.S. OCC national trust bank license, while Stripe itself already has a complete:

• KYC / KYB

• AML

• Merchant compliance system

This means that when stablecoins enter Stripe's funding network, they do not exist as "crypto assets," but rather as: settlement assets acceptable to the regulatory system. The essence of clearing rights is also compliance rights.

Why doesn't Stripe create an exchange? Because exchanges solve asset buying and selling, while Stripe aims to solve: the flow of funds in economic activities. Exchanges are traffic entry points; the clearing layer is the financial infrastructure.

This is completely consistent with its path over the past 15 years: it has never been about traffic, only about the underlying layer. What happens after the clearing layer is completed? When the on-chain account system (Privy), stablecoin clearing network (Bridge), fiat interfaces (Stripe), and compliance layer come together, a completely new structure will emerge: a global clearing system that natively supports stablecoins. This means: enterprises can complete global settlements in real-time, AI can automatically collect payments and share revenue, and funds can be called upon like APIs, all still operating on Stripe's interfaces.

4. Why AI Amplifies Stripe's Infrastructure Advantages

If stablecoins rewrite the clearing layer, then AI changes the service objects of the financial system. In the past financial system, all products defaulted to serving human companies: company registration, bank account opening, signing agreements, manual reconciliation, while the emergence of AI brings a new business entity for the first time—it can create products, earn income, pay costs, participate in revenue sharing, and all of this happens automatically.

This means that what AI needs is not a "better payment tool," but rather a set of: financial systems that can be directly called by programs.

1. AI Business Models Naturally Run on Stripe

Today, almost all mainstream AI products' commercialization paths are highly consistent: API call billing, usage-based charges, subscription models. And this entire revenue structure, Stripe has already provided a complete infrastructure:

• Subscription lifecycle management

• Usage-based billing

• Global tax and compliance

• Enterprise-level payment capabilities

This is also why, from OpenAI to Anthropic, from Midjourney to Perplexity, many AI companies run their revenue systems on Stripe during the commercialization phase. This is not a partnership; it is a structural match: AI's business model naturally requires Stripe.

2. Usage-Based Billing is the Financial Operating System of the AI Economy

The biggest difference between AI and traditional SaaS is: SaaS charges per seat, while AI charges based on computation, tokens, requests, call counts, and model inference costs—all of these belong to dynamic billing.

And what Stripe has heavily invested in over the past few years is precisely the usage-based billing capability, including: real-time measurement, tiered billing, automatic plan upgrades, and revenue recognition, which makes it not just a payment tool, but rather: the revenue operating system for AI companies. In this structure, the financial system participates in the design of the product pricing model for the first time.

3. Atlas + Treasury + Issuing: Giving AI "Company Capabilities"

When an AI agent begins to independently complete business actions, it needs not just payment capabilities, but also: legal entities, funding accounts, and payment capabilities, and these capabilities already exist in a modular form within the Stripe system: Atlas → registering a company, Treasury → funding accounts, Issuing → payment capabilities, which means that, from a financial structure perspective: AI for the first time possesses all the foundational infrastructure to become a "company."

4. AI Agents Need the Right to Call Funds

In the agent economy, the most critical thing is not collecting money, but rather: spending money automatically. For example: automatically purchasing computing power, automatically calling APIs, automatically executing supply chain payments, and automatically completing profit distribution, which is essentially: programmable money. And Stripe is currently the only financial system that has fully API-ified: accounts, billing, payments, and fund management. This makes it the financial layer that AI can most easily call upon.

In the Web2 era, Stripe served internet companies. In the AI era, its service objects will become:

Programs that can independently complete business actions. When the business entity shifts from human companies to AI, the competition in the financial system is no longer about whose rates are lower, but rather who can become: the default Money API called upon. And everything Stripe has done over the past fifteen years generates time compounding for the first time in this structure.

5. Stripe is Becoming the Money Layer of the AI + Stablecoin Era

Stripe's product form is a Financial OS. It API-ifies payment collection, accounts, fund management, and clearing capabilities, allowing an internet company to call upon financial systems just like calling cloud computing. But in the new economic structure formed by AI and stablecoins, what is more important is no longer "what product it is," but rather which layer it occupies. Just as AWS is not just a cloud service provider, but the Compute Layer of the internet, Stripe is occupying the position of: Money Layer. This means one thing—when business actions begin to be automatically completed by programs, and funds become internet-native objects, the financial system for the first time becomes a foundational capability that can be directly called upon.

Looking back at Stripe's path over the past fifteen years, we find that it has made almost all the choices that "seem not to be the most profitable in the short term": it has not become a traffic entry point, has not issued assets, and has not created a trading platform; it has always focused on a deeper layer: modularizing financial capabilities, API-ifying fund flows, and integrating the clearing system into the internet. In the Web2 era, this simply made it easier for internet companies to collect money. In the structure of AI + stablecoins, this has transformed into: allowing business actions themselves to automatically complete fund flows.

Every round of technological paradigm shifts redefines the layering of infrastructure: the operating system of the PC era, cloud computing of the internet era, the app store of the mobile era, while the AI era introduces for the first time: natively programmable business entities. When business entities are no longer human companies but can run automatically as programs, the default capabilities they need are only two: Compute and Money; the former has already been defined by cloud computing. The default interface for the latter is being occupied by Stripe.

In this structure, most companies will still have user, traffic, or asset issuance capabilities. But only a very few companies will have the defining rights over how funds flow. This is also why Stripe's competitors have never been just payment companies. In the clearing layer, it faces the banking system; in the revenue system layer, it faces app stores and cloud platform billing systems; in the future on-chain financial structure, it faces new financial networks. This is a competition about: who becomes the default Money API.

In the Web2 era, Stripe served internet companies. In the AI era, its service objects will become: programs that can earn money and spend money on their own. When the flow of funds becomes a foundational capability like computing resources, users will not perceive stablecoins, and enterprises will not need to understand on-chain clearing. Just as today no one cares about HTTP. Money will run automatically in the background. And the default interface for that layer is: Stripe.

In the future, most business actions will be completed by programs. And every flow of funds will call the same set of interfaces.

Money will run on Stripe.