What happened: Last week, Stripe hosted its Stripe Tour in Berlin and announced the launch of different localised products for the German market (Stripe). This included the upcoming launch of Stripe Capital. Stripe Capital is available to normal merchants who want to receive funding to grow their businesses, but it also exists as a platform product. This enables platforms to offer loan products to their customers. Stripe Capital will be rolled out in Germany later this year.
My comment: The announcement of Stripe Capital is not a big surprise, as the European Embedded Lending market is heating up. We are currently seeing many of the stand-alone players that started a few years ago expanding, adopting their products, or refocusing on specific Ideal Customer Profiles. With Stripe, other lending options will become available in the German market, which will be especially interesting for all platforms that have already integrated Stripe for payment acceptance. It will be interesting to see whether the platform offering from Stripe Capital has a chance to compete with standalone embedded lending providers. For this brain exercise, keep in mind that Stripe announced in April 2024 (my newsletter) a more modular approach to their offering, which should make it easier for businesses only to use selective Stripe products.
