Stripe's New Charge Card Program Could Help Shopify

Stripe has been one of the most successful payment companies in the world by making it dead simple for developers and small businesses to integrate credit card processing.

Back in 2018, Stripe went beyond payment processing, however. They launched a new (and now) fast-growing line of business called Stripe Issuing. The "issue" with issuing in the past, however, was that it only worked for pre-funded cards - i.e., a stored value card.

Not for credit.

This changed in the past week with the launch of charge cards by Stripe Issuing. This allows Stripe to bring its ease of payment and financial innovation beyond the pre-funded card market to charge cards.

It's not hard to guess that Shopify Balance (a stored value card launched in 2020) is based on Stripe Issuing, given its reference customer status on the Stripe Issuing Homepage.

What could Charge Cards enable? A deeper tie between Shopify and not just businesses but also consumers.

Imagine earning Shop Cash whenever you use Shopify's Credit Card (unannounced) with greater cashback and discounts on Shopify's stores.

Imagine using Shop Cash wherever you see Shop Pay, not just in the Shop App.

Chase has 450 Shops in its Chase Shopping portal.

Rakuten has 2,500 retailers in its Rakuten Points program.

Shopify has millions of Shopify merchants.

It's not hard to see how even if this wouldn't add significant revenue to each Shopify merchant, it could add substantial revenue to Shopify in the aggregate.

It's coming, folks. And it's not even that hard to predict.

Shopify is going to be a credit card issuer. The only thing left to figure out is this: what is the biggest hook and distribution mechanism to do so?

This is another reason Shopify needs Shop App to succeed. It can only pollute its merchant checkout experience so much (or at all) with Shopify offers. It needs its own buyer-facing distribution channel to monetize this.