Stripe launches Financial Connections to connect businesses

Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, today launched Stripe Financial Connections, enabling businesses to establish direct connections with their customers’ bank accounts that power a wide range of financial processes. Financial Connections is a tool that businesses can use to verify accounts, pay payments and check balances. It also helps to cut down on fraud. It was almost impossible to establish programmatic direct bank account connections. Either businesses had to develop custom integrations to the thousands of US financial institutions where customers have bank accounts or they tried to work around it by asking customers to input routing numbers and account numbers. Then, microdeposits could be confirmed a few days later. This is a time-consuming process that 40% of customers leave behind. Financial Connections provides an easier solution: customers simply enter their online banking credentials and select the account they’d like to link. It works with platforms, businesses and all types of users, including NFT creators and churches. “As in-person worship returns, we’re doing everything we can to help our churches sustain themselves and the communities they serve. Stripe Financial Connections allows us to quickly and easily verify bank accounts in order to accept donations. This is good for the churches we support, who can more easily accept donations, and good for their members, who can quickly link their bank accounts,” Jeremy Ricketts is the product manager at Planning Center Software Platform for Churches. There are many benefits to bank account connections. Business owners will benefit from linked bank accounts which make it easier to pay direct debits. This increases conversion. Financial Connections gives platforms the ability to access linked bank accounts to offer loans and underwrite risk to their users. And for all parties, Financial Connections — and the bank account connections it facilitates — opens the door to a suite of financial services. For example, businesses can provide tools to their customers for tracking spending patterns, paying bills and monitoring budgets. Nifty Gateway is a marketplace for NFTs that uses Financial Connections with Stripe Connect in order to onboard and pay thousands of creators. “With Stripe Financial Connections, creators can link their bank accounts in seconds when they join Nifty Gateway. No account number typos, no delayed payouts, it just works,” Patrick McLaren is chief operating officer at Nifty Gateway. Connectivity to US bank accounts Financial Connections is built around transparency, security and customer privacy. Financial Connections is available to businesses who specify the information they request from customers and the reasons they require it. Customers have visibility into what information they share during the linking process. Then, once a link is established, Stripe encrypts a customer’s bank account information and saves businesses the risk of managing sensitive credentials on their own. “Businesses have been asking us for an easy, secure way to connect to and verify their customers’ bank accounts,” Clara Liang is the business lead at Stripe. “Stripe Financial Connections delivers just that.” Integrated with payments and capital infrastructure Financial Connections allows companies to connect bank account information to other Stripe financial products such as Connect and Stripe Capital, Stripe Identity and Stripe Treasury. This combination of products produces powerful results. Financial Connections and Connect platforms can reduce payout failures up to 75%. Stripe’s combination of Capital and Financial Connections allows users to receive 55% greater loan offers. Stripe Financial Connections is available for businesses in the US. Visit this site for more information. stripe.com/financial-connections.