Tag: stripe

Stripe wants to turn your AI costs into a profit center

Posted on by faz_business


Stripe on Monday released a preview of a new feature that could help AI startups (and other companies) solve the problem of passing through the underlying costs of AI model usage to their customers.

Stripe’s feature, however, goes even further than just passing through the costs of the tokens. It allows startups to charge a markup percentage on token usage. So a company can, for instance, charge an automatic 30% above the cost of the tokens that the startup will pay the model maker.

As Stripe described it, “Say you’re building an AI app: you want a consistent 30% margin over raw LLM token costs across providers. Billing automates the process.”

The billing feature lets the startup pick the AI models it uses. It tracks the API prices of those models. It then records the customers’ token usage and applies the profit-margin markup automatically.

As we’ve previously reported, there are a variety of ways that AI startups are charging for their wares. Many of them charge tiered monthly subscriptions that have usage-rate caps; once those are hit, the subscriber may be charged more for exceeding the limit.

For instance, Cursor last year changed the pricing on some of its tiers from unlimited use to rate-limited usage, with fees for extra consumption on top.

Without a usage cap, users could run up big bills for a startup with the model makers, and force the startup to operate in the red. This is especially acute for agentic startups. The more their customers use their agents, the more tokens they consume from the underlying model provider, be that OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic or others — making pricing and business model decisions especially critical.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026

Stripe has also introduced its own AI gateway, a tool that give users access to multiple models, letting them choose the best one for the job. But the billing tool also works with third-party gateways that are already popular, like those offered by Vercel and OpenRouter, according to a tweet by a Stripe product manager,

There are, of course, other startups offering AI model cost management features with their own gateways. OpenRouter, for instance, which grants access to over 300 models, charges a flat 5.5% markup over the token fees for its first-tier plan, and offers budget controls, too.

Stripe is not currently charging its own markup on the gateway, its product manager said on Twitter. The feature, however, is still in waitlist mode. Either way, if Stripe can help startups easily turn tracking and billing for this expense into a profit-maker, it could be a game-changer. Stripe did not immediately respond to a request for comment on when the feature may be generally available.

Stripe, PayPal Ventures bet on India’s Xflow to fix cross-border B2B payments

Posted on by faz_business


Xflow, an Indian fintech startup, has secured backing from both Stripe and PayPal Ventures in a $16.6 million funding round. The investment comes as the company works to carve out a position in cross-border B2B payments, a market still dominated by banks and manual processes.

The Series A round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from existing investors Square Peg, Stripe, Lightspeed, and Moore Capital, while PayPal Ventures joined as a new backer. The all-equity round values the Bengaluru-based startup at $85 million post-investment and brings its total funding to more than $32 million to date.

Despite rapid digitization in domestic payments, cross-border B2B transfers for Indian exporters remain heavily reliant on banks, often with limited visibility into fees, settlement timelines, and the final amount received in rupees. The friction is particularly acute for larger exporters moving millions of dollars into India to fund salaries and local operations, creating an opening for fintech infrastructure players such as Xflow that promise greater transparency and speed in international money movement.

Founded in 2021, Xflow provides cross-border payment infrastructure for businesses ranging from exporters and SaaS firms to platforms and freelancers, enabling them to collect international payments, manage foreign exchange, and settle funds in India.

“Cross-border B2B payments were stuck in a different age compared to UPI,” co-founder Anand Balaji (pictured above, center) said in an interview, referring to India’s widely used instant domestic payments network, the Unified Payments Interface.

Balaji, who previously helped build out Stripe’s India business, founded Xflow with former Stripe colleagues Ashwin Bhatnagar (pictured above, right) and Abhijit Chandrasekaran (pictured above, left).

Last year, Xflow said it enabled Indian businesses to collect payments from more than 100 countries in over 25 currencies. It processed close to $1 billion in annualized cross-border payment volume last year, marking roughly 10-fold growth from the same period in 2024, Balaji told TechCrunch.

Techcrunch event

Boston, MA
|
June 9, 2026

According to the company, its customer base has expanded to about 15,000 businesses spanning SaaS firms, global capability centers (which are offshore units that multinationals operate in India), IT services exporters, freelancers, and fintech platforms.

Transaction sizes vary widely by segment, with global capability centers averaging about $1 million to $2 million per transaction, goods exporters around $30,000 to $40,000, and freelancers roughly $3,000, according to Balaji.

Xflow is positioning itself as a payments infrastructure provider rather than a direct payments application, offering APIs that allow platforms and exporters to embed cross-border money movement into their own products.

“We didn’t want to build the next Wise — we want to power the next thousand Wises,” Balaji said.

The startup has also introduced an AI-based foreign exchange tool to help finance teams optimize the timing of currency conversions. Xflow says the feature has generated incremental gains for some customers through data-driven foreign exchange decisions.

The tool allows businesses to set target conversion rates rather than accepting prevailing bank quotes. Balaji likened the feature to limit orders in trading — instructions to buy or sell only at a specified price.

“What we’ve added is the prediction layer and the ability to actually set a limit order,” he said. The model currently provides a three-day forecast with about 92% confidence, Balaji said, though TechCrunch could not independently verify that figure.

Xflow faces competition from banks that still dominate large cross-border B2B transfers, as well as fintech players such as Wise, Payoneer, and Skydo at the lower end of the market. But Balaji said the startup’s focus on high-value transactions and API-led infrastructure differentiates it from many rivals.

The startup plans to deploy the new capital toward building additional products on top of its core payments infrastructure and securing regulatory licenses in new markets, Balaji said. Xflow is preparing to roll out import capabilities in the coming months and is pursuing licenses in markets including Singapore, while already holding a payments license in Canada, even as it remains focused on India as its primary market.

Xflow said it has also received final authorization from the Reserve Bank of India for a Payment Aggregator–Cross Border (PA-CB) license covering both exports and imports. The startup has signed platform partnerships with Easebuzz and Drip Capital to embed its cross-border capabilities into their offerings.

Backing from Stripe and PayPal Ventures, Balaji said, has helped strengthen the startup’s credibility with banking and regulatory partners, even as it continues to work with multiple payment providers commercially.

The startup currently has about 65 employees as it scales its cross-border infrastructure business.