In an insightful interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Matthew Burlak, Head of Canada GTM at Stripe, highlighted several groundbreaking features introduced at Stripe Sessions 2024, emphasizing their transformative potential for Canadian businesses. Particularly impactful are the 17 upgrades to Stripe Connect, which facilitates financial services for users on platforms like Shopify and FreshBooks, enhancing functionality for SMEs and startups. Matthew also introduced Radar Assistant, an AI-driven component that enhances fraud prevention by allowing businesses to create customized security measures through simple language prompts. This feature promises to elevate transaction security and efficiency, significantly benefiting e-commerce sectors by reducing fraud and boosting conversion rates. As Stripe continues to innovate, Matthew envisions a robust role for fintech in supporting the expansive growth of Canada’s internet economy, underlining Stripe’s commitment to empowering businesses with advanced payment solutions and global market access.
Matthew Burlak is the Head of Canada GTM at Stripe, overseeing the company’s growth in the region, and leading the go to market team. Prior to Stripe, Burlak held key sales and leadership roles in technology companies such as Google Cloud and Salesforce. Burlak has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Brock University and an MBA from Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University.
During the recent Stripe Sessions, several innovative features were unveiled. Which of these features do you believe will have the most significant impact on Canadian businesses, particularly startups and SMEs?
Thousands of Canadian businesses, from promising startups to large enterprises, use Stripe’s products to accept payments, grow their revenue, manage their businesses, and expand their borders.
Among the innovative features unveiled at Stripe Sessions 2024, the 17 upgrades to Stripe Connect are likely to have significant impact on Canadian startups and SMEs.
Stripe Connect is used by large Canadian software platforms like Shopify and FreshBooks to embed and offer financial services to their clients, usually smaller businesses. SMEs running on Shopify, for example, can access Stripe products like Payments and Treasury, directly from their Shopify account.
With the introduction of AI-powered payments, what specific advantages do you think these technologies will bring to Canadian e-commerce businesses in terms of conversion and fraud prevention?
Online fraud continues to rise across the internet, up 11% in 2023 alone. Stripe Radar is our fraud prevention product, trained with hundreds of billions of data points from across the Stripe network.
At Sessions, we launched Radar Assistant, a built-in LLM (large language model) assistant that creates fraud prevention rules from a natural language prompt. In other words, you can ask Radar to generate new fraud prevention rules based on your direct request. The rules can then be tested against previous payments to determine if they would block fraud without increasing false positives, ensuring the suggestion meets your business’s specific needs.
Looking ahead, how do you envision the role of financial technology evolving in supporting the internet economy in Canada? What steps is Stripe taking to lead this transformation?
Digital trade is a key driver for the growth of Canadian businesses today, with the internet serving as the primary infrastructure supporting this trend. According to a recent Stripe report, 66% of businesses of all sizes plan to expand into other countries within the next two years, 68% of consumers are open to cross-border purchases of physical goods, and 59% are open to buying digital services.
It has become essential for Canadian businesses to have a strategic payments partner that can support their global growth while staying ahead of the innovation curve. Stripe’s payments platform is engineered for growth and global expansion, supporting 135 currencies in 47 countries, and offering more than a hundred global payment methods.
What does the future look like for Stripe and Stripe in Canada?
Stripe’s mission is to grow the GDP of the internet. Globally, Stripe has processed 1 trillion dollars in payment volume, a milestone we’re very proud to have achieved.
Canada is the 11th largest market for ecommerce in the world. In 2024, ecommerce in Canada is expected to grow by 14.6%, with revenue reaching $82.26 billion Canadian dollars. We’re confident that Stripe is uniquely positioned to help turn this forecast into reality by providing Canadian companies with the tools they need to expand their digital presence, increase checkout conversion, boost authorization rates, and grow their revenue in this promising market.
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